Long eared Owl

[eric s]

slipe

Nice to be able to rewrite history... ah, my post. Yes, I meant overexposure. That is the second time I've made that mistake this week. Is my brain going soft?

I'll try that method of removing the "fog". I always assumed it was because the dynamic range the sensor could capture wasn't as wide as I might like, so widening it with a contrast boost was the right solution. What do you do when you really do want to increase the contrast? (Or is this another way to do a contrast boost.)

photosbyvito
I missed it the first time too. Its subtle, but its there. What is really annoying is when you use a flash and the branches catch it and stand out.. blotting out a portion of the image. Really annoying. And without the flash, they might have gone unnoticed.

Eric

[calrap]

Eric, your right about the branches in front.............I didn't have time to really compose the shot......Just managed to get a few pictures before he flew off.....

Slipe, .Actually what I did was set the amount to 20 and the radius to 50 ....I use paintshop pro and the effect is to sort of up the contrast and de-fog the picture. You have to be careful not to blow the highlights. I then apply USM radius .45 , amount 350. None of these numbers are written in stone and are probably different if you use photoshop.

[slipe]

Eric You get the widest dynamic range shooting at the lowest contrast. Open the histogram (levels) in Photoshop and move the white and black points in toward the center. The contrast will increase. That is what the contrast does is to move the white and black point the same distance toward or away from each other. You seldom want to blow highlights and shadow detail equally, so you should use levels for contrast adjustment. I always try auto-levels first. It often does a good job. Sometimes auto-levels worsens an image IMO, but it is no problem to take a step back in the history and manually adjust the levels.

It is probably obvious that increasing the contrast by bringing the white and black points toward each other reduces your dynamic range. I always shoot with minimum contrast and sharpening with all of my cameras. They don’t come out of the camera looking great but they post process better and give me all of the dynamic range my little sensors are capable of.

Curves is the ultimate contrast adjustment tool but it isn’t that easy to use. I start out in levels where I have more feedback of the distribution and go to curves after using levels. My Dimage software combines levels and curves so you can refer to the histogram while using curves – never understood why Photoshop has been so stubborn about that.

calrap I have seen that defogging recommendation for Photoshop, so I guess the settings must be similar. I personally go down from the 17 amount if the defogging makes the image too contrasty. Never above 17 and the larger radius limits the chance of having to reduce the amount.

I found a little freeware called SharpControl a year or so ago, and the thing is so sophisticated I have forgotten most of what I know about actual sharpening. I’m not accustomed to seeing that large an amount for actual sharpening though, even with a small radius.

I haven’t seen your picture yet BTW – all I get is the red X.

[checklg]

The out of focus leaves make the wings look curiously plastic in places. I thought initialy it was an overapplication of Neatimage or something similar. Nice bird though.

Regards,
Graham.

[calrap]

Slipe, some good info there.........Not sure why you aren't able to view the picture....Try this URL.

http://www.pbase.com/calrap/owls

Thanks, cal

[eric s]

I still get the red "x" as well, but cutting and pasting worked.

slipe
Ok, I must just have a metal block or something.It always looks to me like you are making light lighter and dark darker, so you are widening your dynamic range. You are moving the data further apart (I thought.) Yes, you are moving the triangles in, but you are redistributing them to wider points in the representable range. If you have no black, but you move the black point in in levels then if you move it far enough something will become back. That means you are widening the maximum dynamic range of the data being displayed.

I'm going to have to mess around in levels and see this again.

The time I compared using brightness/contrast vs. levels for altering contrast I found that they basically produced the same results. Since putting in the number for contrast was so easy, I just stuck with that. Maybe the example picture I was a good one to do the test with.

I agree with you about being able to see curves and levels at the same time. I think being able to do that would be great. I sorta get curves, but being able to see how changing levels changes the curve would be a huge aid in learning.

Is SharpControl a plugin? (quick google search) is it this stand alone program:
http://www.digitalworkflows.com/shar...l/workflow.php

Photoshop is not something that I know very well, so I could easly have been misunderstanding either what you said or what I see in PS. I know a fair amount of photography, but not a heck of a lot about PS.

Eric

[photosbyvito]

it is a stand alone...it says it one the top of the page of the link you posted.