White out on background.

Hi, you've posted quite a vague question I'm afraid - any chance you can post an example of a picture you have taken that demonstrates what you are saying? This may help others give you some advice.
 
You need to think of shots like this as two different parts of an image.

If it's a landscape shot you are taking, and you have a nicely exposed land area, and a white sky, then you need to loo at buying a graduated filter that will darken the exposure of the sky whilst gradually falling away at the horizon leaving the land nicely blended. You can get various types from some wityh a hard edge to very soft gradation - and a number of different stops of difference.

If shooting a portrait or the like, you can easily just meter the sky (camera will do a decent job although you may need to add a stop of exposure compensation to get it right) When doing this and taking a shot, this will normally badly underexpose your subject however this is the beauty of flash. Use flash to light your subject correctly.

There's a couple of ways to do it in-camera.

You can also take 2 shots with the camera on a tripod - one exposed for ground/subject, the other exposed for the sky. Blend them in post processing :)

Good luck
Jim
 
I have added an example ProG77.

Thanks EOS JD, I appreciate your input.

I am using a G1 and still have to bury my head in the manual everyday. I think the camera is reading and setting up on the background and I'm sure it's my fault LOL.


Skinbops
 
That example is a tough one because a filter would cut through your subject too! Only option here would be to take 2 shots. One exposed for the subject the other for the sky and using your photoshop skills, blend them.
 
Thanks very much. I will give it a go and post the results.
 
Charles I hope you don't mind but I've had a dabble with your image to show what some PP can achieve with a single image (I will delete if you wish):

Original


Tweaked


This was done in Photomatix and Paint Shop Pro.
 
Or you could just use a couple of layer masks in Photoshop (2 minute job)
Untitled-25.jpg
 
Or just print it out and use some felt tips?:lol:
(guess who isnt an hdr fan?)


You've run into the problem that the camera cannot capture as wide a range of brightness as your eye (look up dynamic range). Different camera sensors have different dynamic ranges so give different results, but basically there is a point where less than a certain amount of light = black and greater than a certain amount of light = white. Your chosen exposure can set which range of light intensities you can catch, but a single image can only handle so much. So you either expose to get detail in the shadow areas - and get white 'blown out' over exposed bits in the sky or expose to catch the varying light in the sky highlights and get black underexposed shadow areas.


HDR is one way of dealing with this by in effect mixing an image which is seeing the shadows and an image which is seeing the highlights.
 
Mac2474, That is an amazing transformation please don't delete it.

EOS_JD and who? Thank you.

I am only allowed crayons in here ;)
 
who? said:
Or just print it out and use some felt tips?:lol:
(guess who isnt an hdr fan?)

You've run into the problem that the camera cannot capture as wide a range of brightness as your eye (look up dynamic range). Different camera sensors have different dynamic ranges so give different results, but basically there is a point where less than a certain amount of light = black and greater than a certain amount of light = white. Your chosen exposure can set which range of light intensities you can catch, but a single image can only handle so much. So you either expose to get detail in the shadow areas - and get white 'blown out' over exposed bits in the sky or expose to catch the varying light in the sky highlights and get black underexposed shadow areas.


HDR is one way of dealing with this by in effect mixing an image which is seeing the shadows and an image which is seeing the highlights.
Click to expand...

[I didn't do HDR), just a couple of adjustment layers on a very small image but merging two images is as you say one way of creating that additional dnamic range. Filters whilst more expensive can give beeter results.
 
If you want to make people think you took a screenshot from a video game, then sure, those edits are great.

The whiteout in the original picture isn't so bad really. There is still some detail in that sky. We've all been looking at pictures for years and can easily accept that.

Photoshop is like a scalpel... in the right hands the cuts are clean and the work done fine, but in the wrong hands you can kill (a photo) :p
 
swanseamale47 said:
The trick is not to go too far and make it look un-natural.

4315210737_2163b2cd76_o.jpg
Click to expand...

Which I think you just about did :|

Go easy on the sharpening... I think we're too used to seeing oversharpened pics ala Flickr but too much of that makes for an unnatural looking pic too. Generally speaking, aim to shoot well and then go easy on the post-pro. "Enhancing" is different from "reworking".
 
swanseamale47 said:
The trick is not to go too far and make it look un-natural.

4315210737_2163b2cd76_o.jpg
Click to expand...

Yes nice but it does depend on the look you are after. Many great photographers take images that are obviously photoshopped a lot.

My image was purely to show that there's a lot of info in the files you may not be abled to see.
 
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