Low on High, Dark in Bright

Rosco headed up to Lake Shannon in the North Cascades mainly to use up an old roll of film.   The lake is accessible only via an unimproved,  gravel mountain road.  Once we got there, i realized that the lake was a man-made creation.  The late summer low water level exposed the "handiwork".   Basically humans went up to the mountain, bulldozed the shit out of the forest and then flooded it.  Voilá ... LAKE.   It was ghoulish, like a tree-stump cemetery. 

But, back home, pawing his photo-controls, Rosco learned to use the exposure and offset sliders.

 

This is the original photo as commercially scanned and without tweaking.

First tweak uses 27% auto tone correction + 17% midtone contrast + 17% blue highlight increase to do something about the wash-cycle grey sky.

The first tweak substantially livened an otherwise chromatically lifeless shot.  But what rosco discovered is that by using the exposure and offset controls together he can brighten up and shadow down the foto at the same time.  Whereas exposure affects the entire picture; offset works mainly (but not exclusively) on the mid tones.  The second tweak adjust exposure up .46 and offset down .-.0184  

Unfortunately an inevitable side effect of the second tweak was SkyTeal which Rosco hates.  So, for Tweak #3, he selected the sky area and adjusted Hue Saturation and Lightness to "blue" the sky.   "You have to be careful not to overdo it," he said.  "The trick is that the sky should not be darker or less hazy than the furthest point back -- in this case that little bump of mountain.   It has to blend."

Photoshop has a highlight/shadow and midtones control panel which produces similar results.  The difference is that "highlight & shadows" isolates the action to highlights and shadows.  Duh.   Exposure and offset produce more general results.  

Rosco wanted to make sure I put down that he realizes that upping the exposure just even a tad came close to blowing out parts of the shoreline.  He thinks those areas could be adjusted by using the Hi/Dows control; but he says he's too tired, the photo isn't that great anyways and he wants to go chew a bone now. 

So... I  did it for him.

Table in Early Fall

Rockport, WA (2014)

Slices in Light

Roski has been experimenting with what he calls "charro-scurro."    He  wants to capture the transluscent effect of light in the dark and shady forest. 

"But," he says with a certain swagger-of-lingo, "when I bump up the shadows, even just a tad, the picture becomes all tutti-frutti and looses it shimmery."

 "The same, happens, if I tone down the near blow outs in the whites," he ads. 

1st slice

2nd slice

3rd (final) slice

What seems to happen, I suggest, is that by making objects in the  shadows more visible you detract from the contrast between charro and scurro that the eye notices when it first sees the picture.   There are also subtle but sensible changes caused by even a tad more light reflecting around the picture as a whole. 

"But aren't blow outs and burn outs bad to have?"  Roski asks.

Do you see unseeable darks in real life?

"Well, yes, I guess." 

Then do what you like. 

Calm Before the Falls

Padden Gulch,  WA (5/14)

Rosco's Annoyance

Rosco was baffled and annoyed at what Blogger did to his tongue-over-chop, laborious work on the first of his Nooksack series.   Once he was pleased with his fiddling he uploaded it to his page only to see that Blogger had "upped the gamma" to brighten the photograph to a point of visual boredom.  So he went back and darkened it, at first too much and then a tad too little and then so that the uploaded copy pretty much matched the "original" he had decided on in Photoshop/Lightroom.  Rosco now has no idea what anyone else will see.  This means the purchase of yet another programme. 

 

too dark, but something roski had considered as a possible final

pretty much what his final "developed" version in Photoshop looks like

still too dark

Nooksack, Ferndale, Wash. (3/14)

what "Blogger" decided to do rosco's hard work...

Wag Wag - What's in an Algorithm?

 

Rosco is amazed at phoshops coolness.   Top left is single lens, non-filtered original film negative.  Bottom left is what Lightroom does with it.  Right (top and bottom) is the Phoshop Tweak.  

Both LR and PS have adjustments for highlights and shadows (in fact LR has intermediate adjustments for "lights" and "darks" as well).  But whatever algorithm phoshop uses, it adds, in Rosco's poochinion, just an extra gloss. 

Rosco's New Chew Toy

Roski has a new bone and he has been comparing it with his old new bone.   Sometimes the new bone tastes better; sometimes the old one does.  It's so confusing.

Original Scan (L) & LR Adjustments (R)

LR Adjust (L) & PS Adjust (R)

The idea here was to see how and what to use/do in order to get a result equal to the LR adjustment

Both after smart sharpening

Roski says:  you can chew on these until your jaw falls off, but he likes the left one better.

On the other paw....

LR Adjusts on (L) + Further Adjusts in PS (R)

Roski likes the one on the right better, for reasons any dog can see