AG Schnozz wrote:
>Thank you. The printed version has even more processing done to
>it and I'm hardly finished with it yet. I have some printouts
>that I'll live with for a few weeks before hacking into it
>again.
>
>
Certainly a wonderful image.
>The steps were as follows:
>
>1. ..............
>6. Dodged and burned the grass and tree to raise the sunlit
>portion and darken the shadow area. (In the printed version I
>have the sunspot a little lighter). Localized dodging and
>burning was required on the tree. The key here is using a
>dodge/burn tool with selectable highlight, midtone and shadow
>control. With this type of tool I can raise just the high values
>or darken just the low values.
>
Interesting how different people with different backgrounds pick tools
and do jobs. I haven't worked in a wet darkroom for many years, and am
not adept with dodging and burning. The way you describe the 3 level
process sounds quite time consuming. I would try using curves to adjust
this.
>Much more work to go on the tree
>as the print version is just lacking the snap I need.
>
>
I know you are happy you used no sharpening, although I'm not sure why.
In any case, you might find that local contrast enhancement on a
selected area would assist with the snap.
>7. The sky was interesting, but not killer. If I yank the
>contrast of the print way up the clouds take on a life of their
>own.
>
I generally prefer curves over contrast to liven up clouds and sky.
>However, it screws up the forground. I created a duplicate
>layer and heavily skewed the curves of that layer. With the
>background layer turned off, I took the erase tool and "deleted
>to background" everything I didn't want changed. (my eraser was
>a very large (250x250 elipse with 100 penundrum to make
>feathering easy)
>
I don't know if Gimp has it, but I use Select by Color in PS quite often
for this. It's particularly good where sky peeks through lots of
branches, etc. It's much quicker and doesn't affect fine detail in front
of the sky. The boat pic I posted a couple of days ago is a good
example. The sky was quite light and blah in the original, but selecting
it through the forest of masts, shrouds, halyards. etc. by any other
method would be tedious and prone to error
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/boat.htm>.
>8. Repeat #7 a couple of times to selectively darken certain
>clouds. It's sometimes better to work in multiple steps than one
>big step. A chemical darkroom technique is to work "additive".
>In otherwords, it's usually better to ADD exposure through burns
>than to dodge.
>
>9. Selective dodging and burning of the clouds was necessary to
>bring out the glow and the two sunlit cumulus clouds.
>
>
I find that an amazing amout can be done to sky and clouds with levels
and curves without much, if any, detail area adjustment. I particularly
like the way internal cloud detail can be brought out that way.
I've taken your image and done a little curves adjustment ot the upper
80 or so of the sky. I like the increased inner detail in the clouds. It
may still be too dark overall for your taste, but how it looks in a
print I don't know <http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Img66.htm>.
>The picture is as-shot. No cropping was done to the picture. The
>bottom left corner has a crease in the hillside that I find
>disturbing and the tree branches need pixel painting to seperate
>them from the clouds better.
>
Here again, using color selection to separate clouds from tree might
keep them more separate from the beginning. With them then on separate
levels, LCE, curves, etc can further improve separation. Can't be done
effectively on the monochrome and reduced image, though.
> Also, I want to make the sunlit
>hillside stand out a little better from the clouds on the far
>left. The fine-art prints will have other doodads done as well
>as some noise reduction applied. Overall, the picture is a
>little to heavy for my tastes. I like the dramatic, but yet
>there is no feeling of "light". I may do another monochrome
>conversion with the yellow filter to bring out the sunlit
>hillside and tree better and blend that in on another layer.
>
>
There is a technique for B&W conversion in Mastering Digital Printing
that allows some interesting adjustment of the balance of color tone
conversion that might help. More subtle and flexible than using filters,
but possibly also potentially more confusing.
I know I'm not the darkroom technician you are, but hope I might add
some approaches to your toolbox.
Moose
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