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Paulo Calafate
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jan 08 19:26
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This is a photo taken by Dave Brosh in Resolute, Canada. He is a Woophy member (only 3 pics... what a pitty!) and a great photographer as you can see in: http://www.arctic-photo.com/... amazing photos!
I asked him permission to use this picture here, to open a discussion about retouching photos.
For me, the photo has a strong blue color cast. I liked to have the author opinion about this.
Was the snow with that blue tone in really? Or did the camera introduce something new in the landscape? Something that resulted of the digital process?
When we see a picture with snow, we expect for white, pure white.
It is legitimate to try, with edition work, to bring to the reallity or to stay submissive to what you camera offer? Our cameras are not windows. They have lenses, CCD's and software.
What is better, digital camera reallity manipulation or human correction based on memory brain?
I was not at that place, but my brain tells me that it might be like this:
What do you think about this? Do you accept everything that your camera gives to you?
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Martin de Rijk
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jan 08 20:33
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Paulo, I have been looking for several minutes at both pictures at the same time and I have the same questions for Brosh as you have. I hope he'll will answer them.
For me, I prefer your version, because I always love the real contrast between pure white snow/ice and the surroundings. I like the blue version also but the lack of contrast makes this picture less interesting for me. I still believe this was done on purpose and I would like to know the idea behind it. As far as I know your collection, I believe you always try to get the most realistic version you can get, with or without corrections. For me I sometimes like to try to play with reality, Although I'm still to conservative when it conceirns processing etc, in my opinion.
Your work on this picture is very good and I would love to know how you brought back the nice white in this one.
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th-
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jan 08 20:41
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...great topic Paulo!
Sometimes the CCD provides results which are not really exciting. Here is for example a pic of a thundercloud out of my camera:
My eyes have seen dramatic shades and a minatory cloud. So i tried an ordinary white balance and got this result:
The truth is something between these two pics, but i liked the result very much.
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TBM
Member
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# Posted: 7 Jan 08 21:06
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Nice topic, and so many things to say about!
Personally, I like better the original version of the artic landscape. It is a bit low in contrast, it's true, but gives that sense of Endless Ice World that makes the pic so dramatic. The retouched version makes me think to a week-end in a ski resort.
In general, to answer Paulo's question: Yes, I fully agree, very often realism is achieved only by manipulation. For the reasons that Paulo has explained, and also because sometimes you have to lie a bit to be true. I mean, you have to stress some aspects of a pic (a dominante, the contrast, etc) to make it appear "realistic".
In this picture, for instance:
I had to add a very light shade of orange to the sky in order to reach the same effect that I saw that afternoon.
And so my proposal is this: everybody is free to act as he prefers, of course, but wouldn't it be nice if some of us promise to declare precisely, posting a new pic, what photoshopping process they have used? OK, I know, we all have our secret tricks, and some think that photoshopping is unbecoming for a good photographer... but why not try?
@th- Great work with that cloud!
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Sergio Leitao
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 02:38 - Edited by: Sergio Leitao
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This is really a great topic, and my answer to the question is "Just Brain"
"Uma fotografia jamais estará acabada no momento em que se pressiona o botão disparador da máquina. Isto é tanto verdade hoje, como o era no dia em que a fotografia nasceu."
"A photo will never be finished on the moment that the shutter button is pressed. This is true today as it was on the day that photography was born."
This sentence was taken from a book called "Fotografia Digital ... Adobe Photoshop Lightroom" that was written by a portuguese photographer called Joel Santos...
... And i agree with him about the need of post processing... and I also think that photography doens't have to be necesserely about asolute reality, photography has to do about the message that the photographer wants to pass to those who will see the image, and this might have to do with emotions, impact, drama, reality, colourfull things, and a lot of other reasons that anyone finds the will to show. Therefore is very legitimate that the image might be processed according to what the photographer wants the viewer to feel.
This question raises some problems among those who think that post processing is cheating... i say its a question of taste... if you dont like it, dont eat it...
I agree with TBM in Two points:
First, even though, i dont find the snow picture particulary atractive, i also like the original better, the blue colour cast might be a reflection of the sky, and creates a colder feeling, that i think that might be the point.
And second, i also think that people shouldn't "hide" the originals, we all could have a lot to learn with that.
Finally, my latest post processed photo and its original (hope you like... thats the porpose)
Original (150 sec exposure @f22)
Final
As A.Miguel Oliveira said: see it large and with the lights off
Best regards
Sergio Leitao
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Vidar S
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 07:35
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For me, the correct use of the whitebalance may give a false impression on how the picture really looks.
I try to use a white paper to adjust the whitebalance before I take the picture, and the result is whatever is white, becomes white, but for some reason the picture becomes a picture without soul. The first picture on this forum is much too blue, but every human mind knows that blue is connected to cold! The second picture looks much more real to me, but it's not as exciting as the untouched.
The bottom pictures is different. I don't need the feeling of winter or the cold temperature, and to me the second version is a much better version. (Great picture!)
I think a little exaggeration is needed sometimes to show what you would feel if you were at the place in the photo.
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Martin de Rijk
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 07:39
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"A photo will never be finished on the moment that the shutter button is pressed. This is true today as it was on the day that photography was born."
Great quote Sergio, I fully agree. An example of how a boring picture (original) can transform in something more interesting.
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Vidar S
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 07:44
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That's an amazing result! How did you do this?
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Martin de Rijk
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 07:56
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This was the result of just playing around with a new program, PS-pro 9, a long time ago. I was unfamiliar with it and started experimenting with cropping, curves, contrasts etc. Just to see how far you could go. I liked the result and since then I work this way, but a bit more controlled ;-)
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pansa
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 09:58
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@ Paulo
I like results of postprocessing but IMO the snow is a bit too yellow. I also associate cold with blue (not so much as in the original). If you watch the marvellous movie "The march of the Pinguins" on the south pole you see blue-ish whites.
Generally speaking there is hardly any picture that doesn't go through postprocessing in my portfolio. Of course you try to get the original as good as possible, but a bit help is always needed.
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António Botelho
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 10:16
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Paulo!!!!This is really a great topic!!!
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Rob Verwilligen
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 11:20
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Being both a new member to this forum and relatively new to photography I find this discussion very interestng.
Since a conversation I had with a die-hard film photographer I sometimes wonder why people make a big fuzz about adjusting/changing colors and/or whitebalance in post processing. I met this guy at an airport and we had about a 45 minute conversation on exactly this subject during which I learned that what do nowadays on our computer film photohraphers partly used to do by choosing one from many different colored filters to achieve certain effects.
It can be said that with digital pics and modern software this is now more accessable then it was in the past but it is certainly nothing new and photos have been "edited" one way or the other for a long time.
I guess that at the end of the day it is about what the photographer thinks is beautiful or not -white snow versus blue-ish snow- and beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, fortunately.
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Oscar_
Moderator
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 11:20
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I like such topics so much. We can learn so much from eachother by doing those topics.
I think I prefer the edited one by Paulo. When I see some pictures of winterlandscapes with snow or ice my brains tell me they have to be white. So when I look to such pics I expect to see the white snow as I see this with my own eyes. So I think you want to see what your brains tell you.
I see editing pictures as doing it in the darkroom. In the past people goes into the darkroom to make there pictures. Now we go in the darkroom by doing photoshopping.
Just to show a picture that is nice to look at.
I like the picture of Sergio. The first one is not an interesting picture to look at. The second one is far from reality but I like watching that picture. So I think Sergio did a great job in his darkroom.
Here is a example of 2 of my pictures that are not so nice to look at without editing. I edited those so they become nice to look at.
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Paulo Calafate
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 12:58
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@ Martin de Rijk: I used Photoshop to make the color change.
I created a selection of the snow zone - there are several possibilities to do that. Than I used the Hue/Saturation Adjustment only in the Blue and Cyan fields, reducing the Saturation and increasing a little the Lightness. I worked too, in this snow selection, a little with the Levels, to improve the contrast (more white in the highlights and more black in the shadows, trying to not exaggerate). Next I inverted the selection and I used the the Selective Color adjustment to turn more white the clouds leaving the sky with that beautiful cold blue - in the Color box, select Whites; than slide the Black bar to the left until your taste.
@ th-: good contrast improvement to create a more dramatic effect.
@ TBM: the question here is to believe or not in what your camera offer you. Is your a picture a scanned one? Can you show us the original version?
@ Sergio Leitão: I agree with you. And I like very much your HDR work in this photo. It seems that you used a big flash to iluminate the rocks.
@ Pansa:I didn't use any yellow filter to correct the blue color cast. Only desaturating blues and cyans and work with levels.
@ Oscar_: What softare do you use to make your HDR images? With photoshop I know that there is the possibility to create a layer with the filter effect, and afterwards, working with the Opacity option, you have the hability to reduce the level of the result until your taste.
In your HDR pictures I like the fact that they don't have the supernatural halos that usually we found in this kind of images.
@ Vidar S, António Botelho, Rob Verwilligen: Thanks for your words and opinion.
For everyone: I want to prove you, with my example, that the camera by itself is a filter. It introduces color changes, noise, lens distortions, artifacts, etc. It doesn't offer you what you see with your eyes. So, I think it's legitimate to use our own filters too.
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Oscar_
Moderator
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 13:11
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@Paulo, I use photomatix. The first one is actually a jpg. I opened this jpg picture in PS into the RAW plugin. This is a little bit weird to open a jpg into the RAW but it works fine. Then I save 5 times this picture in several exposure times. Then I use photomatix for the tonemapping and finally open the picture in PS to finalize it.
The second picture is one RAW image that I used for different exposure times and edit in photomatix. Then finalize it in PS.
Seems a little strange but everything works. I had some older jpg pictures and wasn't happy with it. Thanks to Ruud I learned to open jpg in PS into the raw plugin. Because my jpg picture has enough details in the overexposed areas this whole process works just great.
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zerega
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 13:26
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@ Paulo,
I'd like the corrected one better with two exceptions:
One was already mentioned, the corrective effort resulted in a skin-coloured tinge (pansa said yellow, maybe we have different monitor tints) the other is a bit more difficult, because it involves a rather heavy masking job of certain regions:
If you have a close look at the larger ice cubes, you'll notice a fine ice-blue tinge. The ice blue isn't a film/CCD colour tint or ice being blue but a result of sub-surface scattering of sunlight and skylight rays, i.e. light trapped and sent across the ice in various directions. Sometimes i have to simulate this effect in my job (animation), rather difficult to achieve and very heavy on computer rendering power.
So keep this blue in exactly that hue and intensity. This is the magic of thick arctic ice cubes you want to have in your vodka tumbler while chilling at the ice bar après ski.
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zerega
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 13:27
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Oh, and the snow may reflect a bit of the blue sky, so a little blue tint is o.k.
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Paulo Calafate
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 13:36
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@Oscar_: Sometimes I use the Photomatix plugin of Photoshop. I work all my photos with Camera Raw 4.3.1, save it as TIFF (16bits) and finally, if necessary, I made further changes within Photoshop CS3 (files open in TIFF format, 16 bits). The Photomatix plugin works at 16 bits, and to put their result in a new layer gives lots of possibilities. And I don't need to leave of Photoshop.
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Paulo Calafate
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 13:49
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@ Zerega: Thank you for your explanation about the blue tone in the large ice cubes. I understand perfectly and I'm seeing in other photos that color phenomenon that you refer. Only people that was in those places can tell that. It's because I liked to hear the opinion of Dave too
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Steve L
Member
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# Posted: 8 Jan 08 17:29
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@ Paulo: Glacial ice often has the blue cast which is best seen when the skies are overcast. Here are two versions of a picture of an iceberg which had a very distinct blue color while the rocks, sky, and most of the water were gray. The water, especially in the foreground, does have some blue in it as well. This link explains a bit about the blue ice:
http://www.northstar.k12.ak.us/schools/joy/denali/OConnor/colorblue.ht ml
The first picture is what came from the camera, but reduced in size. The second is with some contrast and highlights and shadows touch-up and some sharpening (perhaps a little too much).
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