What do you do about these skies?

rh1944

rh1944

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Edit My Images
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All from China last September.

#1 By 4:00 in the afternoon, the camera was asking for the flash.

2796061390_a374887093_o.jpg


#2 this is the Sun rising in the morning

2795213665_2579eb87e5_o.jpg


#3 The Summer Palace in the afternoon

2795213785_08bf9f39d2_o.jpg


#4 The Summer Palace a bit earlier in the afternoon

2795213939_5ed82dfdb5_o.jpg


All taken with the 400D and the zoom at 300mm. The banded effect in the sky was common. Please post any improved images.
 
The banding is a real problem for me, and its a shame as number 2 looks like an astonishingly good image. Is this present in your raw file? I am wondering if some form of advanced PP can remove it.

Gary.
 
Sorry I don't have the RAW any more for #2. I gave up on the banded images and binned the RAWs. When I tried substituting in another sky in #3, there was too little content in the water and the software thought that some of the water was sky. This was true of some of the cityscapes too. All the long range shots suffered from the distortion. I put it down to the pollution and lens interaction.
 
It looks like jpeg compression has played a part here as well.
 
China is a series of great photo opportunities! I have never seen anything like the banding - what is causing it? Surely not jpeg comression?

Chris
 
I didn't spot the banding in the LCD, but then I suspect it was there but difficult to identify. I have lots of images that have the same effect. I still don't have a clue as to the cause. I plan to go again next year and as it's going to be Winter the pollution should be worse. I'll take more note next time.
 
Here's a quick play with the second image to clean up most of the banding in the sky. For the ground it was a balance between detail and smoothness.

rhedit.jpg
 
Excellent, that's very close to what the eye saw at the time. How did you do it?
 
Just Dave said:
nice shots Russell just a shame about the skies, I like pxl8 edit
Click to expand...

:agree: I think that is what I wanted in the camera, not the banded rubbish I got.
 
rh1944 said:
Excellent, that's very close to what the eye saw at the time. How did you do it?
Click to expand...

Duplicated the layer.
Blurred the bottom layer with a radius of 64px
Set the top layer to soft light blend mode
Duplicated the top layer again and deleted everything except the sun.
Set the Sun layer to normal mode and tweaked the brightness/contrast a bit
Added a mask to the bottom layer and then put a gradient in the mask to fade out the bottom part a bit and let the detail in the ground come back a bit.

Basically I blurred copied the layer and blurred it to hell and then re-introduced some of the detail areas.
 
pxl8 said:
Duplicated the layer.
Blurred the bottom layer with a radius of 64px
Set the top layer to soft light blend mode
Duplicated the top layer again and deleted everything except the sun.
Set the Sun layer to normal mode and tweaked the brightness/contrast a bit
Added a mask to the bottom layer and then put a gradient in the mask to fade out the bottom part a bit and let the detail in the ground come back a bit.

Basically I blurred copied the layer and blurred it to hell and then re-introduced some of the detail areas.
Click to expand...

That's great, many thanks. It worked a treat. :notworthy:
 
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