Open Week Begins with a vacation Photo

[ggroess]

The image is later afternoon but not the golden light you are all looking for.  There is a yellow cast on most of the images posted.  I'll be posting another image and my corrections late today or sometime tomorrow.  There is some great discussion going on and please keep asking questions.

Greg

[imported_Tanja]

Art,
thanks a lot, but I like your correction much more than mine.
It's really natural and balanced.
I definitely have a big yellow cast from using this blue shadow for the blackpoint.
Maybe there is a way to fix it in Lab, but I'm a little bit afraid of using curves there.
Think your colors and brightness are much more correct, but I have to try this "quick and dirty" way for the contrast.
Next time a bigger picture. I promise ;-)

Daniel,
are you from germany too?
Better english than mine ;-)
Aplying red channel into the whole rgb means trough away the other channels. This in Luminosity mode often makes a more interesting sky. But in this case a more dirty one too ;-)
In german it's the command "Bildberechnungen".
I had the same problem with the blue shadows. Read a little bit above for Gregs tip.

Greg,
do you have a solution for the yellow cast?
Or new beginning, first delete the blue shadows and then going on?
My problem with the method using the inverted L-Channel as a mask and correct only in B-Channel was, that the shadows in the front of the picture maybe get's to green, as I see today. Difficult picture for me.

Greetings, Tanja

[imported_Tanja]

A quick try with b-curve from lab. Just click nearly the middle, because I don't hit and push to blue.
Protecting the background with a modifyed mask from same channel.
I bed now it's to red ;-)
But now bigger, art! Quality sadly now at 50%.

Greg, is there some trick in cm for getting the zeropoint of the curve?
And also I have problems to set a curvepoint in the maskcurve. "Strg+Click" don't work like in the other masks.

Greetings, Tanja

[ggroess]

In LAB only the center is zero.  Do you have the numbers displayed in the curves grid?  If not they can be turned on in the configuration panel.  We will be covering some of this in week 1 but go look for the settings in the configuration panel.

I would zoom into the image and look for areas that your brain says "This should be neutral"  then Alt-click on that spot and set a hue clock.  Your default hue clock setting is 5X5 pixels.  That is a very small sample and you can get very close.  I found areas int eh image that serve as a very nice neutral. 

You can use the hue clock to help you adjust the neutral.  In lab adjust the neutral by moving the ends of the curve line only.  If you set a point inside then you will have a problem moving the neutral.  Lab can be confusing at first but it is so powerful and so fast it really is addictive.

The color cast is best solved in RGB using By the numbers corrections for Shadow and Highlight.  I found while the shadows are blue the highlights are reddish...

Greg

[Daniel Zuck]

Tanja:

thanks for your reply.  No, not German. 

dan

[imported_artmar]

Tanja,

Appreciate the larger size of your image, but can also see the degradation of quality.  Instead of 1200 wide, try saving at 1100 wide -- it's still large enough to see details, and at that size you should be able to "save for web" as high quality, 63%. See what you think.

Cheers,
Art

[Rickypics]

OK Greg, My image looks flat to me but having seen the the Grand Canyon numerous times over the last 40 years it is rare that colors are not muted by distance and haze.

I spent some time on this one using lab only. The more I play with it the more I realize I don't know what I am doing.

I just reread your instructions and I am not following them. I am not using any of PS other tools. I am only using Curvemeister for my corrections. My bad.
Will try again later using all the tools I am familiar with in PS and integrating Curvemeister.

Lots to learn here. Thanks

[imported_Tanja]

I give up, Greg.
Can't find something, where my brain works to find a neutral.
Not even a good black and white point. I decide a point in the clouds for being white, because not sure on any other point (clouds too *g*).
I'm very exited for your solution.

Hope, the next picture is easyer for me for trying "by numbers" in curvemeister.
Found the Zeropoint in Lab now. Thanks!
Jep, rotation with a middle point is complicated  :D.
I love that for recolor. Really great feature and first reason for bying. But the rest still in ps. Habits...


Art, next one 1100 wide. Hope the quality is enough then.
While Greg not posted his solution...what points you chose for neutral, black and white?

Dan, in english ps version it is "Apply immage" (oups, dobble "p") under "image".
Don't know, if the command is avaiable in elements.
When no channel is chosen, you apply to the whole picture.
For more information about this, read something from Dan Margulis.
After one year with his book of color correction, I slowly notice, that it is not written in secret language  ;D.

Greetings, Tanja

[ggroess]

No worries Rick, that is why you are here...
This image can be really easy or really hard it depends on the goals for the image.  I'm glad you went back and re-read them...

Flat we can fix. 

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Hello Everyone,

I seem to be starting a little late.  Attached is my first attempt.  I do 99% of my image processing in Lightroom using Adobe camera raw.  I only try my hand, usually disastrously, with Photoshop only when I want to put an image into a slide show or to make a print.  That is the part of my workflow I hope to improve.

As I normally do, I started out in camera raw.  The attached is my output from camera raw.  I adjusted the temp, exposure, adjusted most of the tone controls.  I added a gradient to the sky for a slight darkening along with hue and saturation to darken and improve the sky.  A little clarity and a slight touch of vibrance completed this stage.

After I study my results this PM to determine where I want to take it, I will try my hand with Photoshop to do mot=re improvementsThis evening I will take the image into photoshop and try to do more improvements.  I am working on understanding the previous posts as intially I had no idea what was being talked about.

Thanks,
Jerry