How to get those dynamic colours?

[theotherleft]

Hi,

I was sent this pic of me in action:

It looks pretty much like how I remember the colours - however the picture I took moments later, below, completely lacks these dynamic colours. His was a jpeg, mine I took in raw. I guess I'm going wrong somewhere in my PP in LR.... (My whole set from Sossusvlei are similarly toned, so I'd love to be able to pull the sand and sky colour through rather more.) I've used raw and LR for 8 months so I'm still learning, and I've run out of ideas on this one - can someone suggest where I'm going wrong in my PP?

thanks
Dean

 

[EdinburghGary]

Do you still have the RAW file? Easy to achieve by dragging a few sliders

Gary.

 

[photon]

Minus 1/3rd stop exposure; boosted saturation.

 

[AliB]

Two things that struck me.

One which lenses. The first one has that characteristic vignetting that you get on wide angles which adds to the saturation.

Secondly was the polariser question. Was one shot using a polariser and the second not?

Both of those would add to the saturated colours.

Or you could just cheat and do it in photoshop!

 

[Jamougha]

Go into photoshop, open up the levels dialogue and drag the sliders to eliminate the empty space at each side of the histogram. Do this for every shot you take.

 

[Slapo]

Set a black point in Levels and apply a high radius low amount USM (like 50 and 0.5).

 

[theotherleft]

Thanks guys.

Do you still have the RAW file? Easy to achieve by dragging a few sliders

Yes - I think I've resolved never to throw them away! It was just a question of which sliders...!

Minus 1/3rd stop exposure; boosted saturation.

And these worked for me too. I thought I had played with saturation already (amongst others), expecting benefit from there, it must be the combination with exposure that I missed. I am increasingly finding that I knock back exposures in PP to get more depth of colour, hopefully that's good learning.

Two things that struck me.

One which lenses. The first one has that characteristic vignetting that you get on wide angles which adds to the saturation.

Secondly was the polariser question. Was one shot using a polariser and the second not?

The first (more saturated) pic was from a Powershot G5, so would have been wide angle (says 7.19mm on EXIF but it's a compact), and no polariser whereas my shot was with Canon 17-55 which I'm pretty sure would have had a polariser on - so I'd have expected some saturation in my shot from that?

Go into photoshop, open up the levels dialogue and drag the sliders to eliminate the empty space at each side of the histogram. Do this for every shot you take.

I've taken this advice also (though in LR) and while I understand it generally have found that on this series of shots if I occupy more of the space to the right it just washes out - have I misunderstood or is that due to characteristics of these pics (limited colours, few shadows etc)? (Checking, there seems to be more space to the right of the histogram in LR though than in PS. Weird!)

Set a black point in Levels and apply a high radius low amount USM (like 50 and 0.5).

Slapo, your edit did bring through the granliness of the tree really well and I near replicated this in PS by using the eyedropper to set the black level. 2 questions:
- can anyone advise if there is a way of doing this sort of level setting in LR (ie not via sliders/dragging curve) or do I need to go into PS every time?
- was the USM a different point or part of this process, I didn't understand it's role?

So I think I've learnt a bunch already, and have already had a quick test on the other pics from that series which are looking lots better. Thanks again.

Dean

 

[grim8634]

Surely the white balance setting on your camera would effect this as much as anything else on camera. I know on my 30d you can setup all kinds of crazyness in the white balance with custom modes.

 

[Slapo]

Slapo, your edit did bring through the granliness of the tree really well and I near replicated this in PS by using the eyedropper to set the black level. 2 questions:
- can anyone advise if there is a way of doing this sort of level setting in LR (ie not via sliders/dragging curve) or do I need to go into PS every time?
- was the USM a different point or part of this process, I didn't understand it's role?

So I think I've learnt a bunch already, and have already had a quick test on the other pics from that series which are looking lots better. Thanks again.

If you use USM with a high radius, it tends to improve contrast, usually in a slightly different way than contrast, levels or curves do.
I can't help you with Lightroom, but there should be a curves editor, which you can use to move the black point... although I'm almost sure there is a way to set it there in a different way with a tool meant for that.

 

[Adam.]

Could be just because it's a JPEG, it automatically adds a saturation boost and sharpening. Where as raws are untouched by the camera, so initially lack the vibrant colours out of camera.

 

[Jamougha]

I've taken this advice also (though in LR) and while I understand it generally have found that on this series of shots if I occupy more of the space to the right it just washes out - have I misunderstood or is that due to characteristics of these pics (limited colours, few shadows etc)? (Checking, there seems to be more space to the right of the histogram in LR though than in PS. Weird!)

I had a play to see what happened. I am using the Gimp, but in theory there shouldn't be a difference; of course theory isn't practise.

Adjusting the right and left sliders, leaving a little space on the right, and then tweaking the brightness with the middle one gives me this:

I wouldn't call it washed out - contrast is good - but there are some clear tonal problems on my monitor. (Hopefully we are using the same colour space otherwise you're about to think I'm a moron.) The sky is too green and too red at the bottom, the red sand is too green and too luminous and the sand at the bottom could be about right. Adjusting the slider on the green histogram to clip the bottom (should be mainly the sky as the sky doesn't have much green in absolute terms) and the making some more small changes to the red and value histograms to taste gives me this:

Which is better but the sand at the bottom may be too red now.

If you want someone to really fix this then you need to post the raw file. The colours and exposure should have been more accurate after the raw conversion.

HTH

 

[theotherleft]

Thanks for all that, I've had a go at all my pics from there now using the various bits of advice and they're a lot better. It goes to prove how much room to play there is with raw files...

cheers
Dean