Blown out Egret
I don't know why the photos from this series seem to be irretrievably blown out. All my settings were typical of other successful egret shots, but these are different for some reason. I've tried all sorts of things to get the detail back into the birds, but none of my usual tricks are working. If anybody has ideas I'd love to have them. I got a whole series of great action between these two birds, and I hate to just throw it all away. Thanks for any tips you can offer.
I'm attaching an unedited image. Not possible to send a RAW file, unfortunately.
Owen
-
Difficult to comment w/o the raw, did you try this is any other app as well? It is very easy to overexpose for egrets depending on the light and the gear since they are in 2 extremes...Black and White.
0 -
Thanks, Nitin. I ran one image through Topaz DeNoise, although I didn't expect that to help the exposure situation, of course. Camera settings were 1/1000, ISO 640, f/7.1. I'm not sure how to post a RAW image; I don't think this system allows for it.They may just be irretrievable.
0 -
You can always put a file on Google drive and share a link to that with permissions for anyone with the link. Of course, that would take up space on the drive for a while.
Sometimes, the recovery range of sensors can be surprising. Just try reducing the exposure, white point as also the highlights.
0 -
To go with Nitin's advice on uploading the RAW file, I use Dropbox. Upload the image to there then post the download link here. No need to mess with permissions or any of that stuff. Later today or tomorrow you can remove it from Dropbox.
I'd be interested in seeing the RAW file.
Have you tried setting the Camera Profile to Linear RAW. All the other settings are applying a LUT to the image before you can do any of your own processing. I find a lot of my images that were properly exposed show blown highlights until I change the profile.
0 -
Forgot to mention, you can also try turning off the "Recover Highlight Hue" option.
0 -
That is what a lot of my pelican photos look like when opened in Photo Raw. I still keep lightroom for the sole purpose of handling the highlights that THE OLD highlight recovery in photo raw can't. The new features in photo raw might help, but since my RAWS are tier 2, they aren't supported and I can't use them.
Is your RAW supported in On1? Do you see the highlight recovery and camera profiles when you edit this?
0 -
Thanks, everybody. Here's a link to the RAW image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IL81ELBItltXdMvyiX7zMcHms5iaMWP2/view?usp=sharing
0 -
Here is what I got from setting the Camera Profile to Linear Raw and pulling the Highlights slider down to -56 and the Whites slider to -29. No other adjustments were made.
0 -
IMO, the detail is mostly there although it is pushed right up to the edge, the same way I shoot. :) It is the Camera Profile LUT that is pushing it over the edge.
0 -
I'd like to know more about camera profiles. I do see the "Camera Profile" drop-down menu in Tone and Color, but I've never paid much attention to it. It shows a number of default profiles (I tried all of these on the image with no perceptible improvement) and an "import" option. Is it possible to import a profile for a specific camera? If so, how does that work?
Choosing the "Linear Raw" profile did seem to help. Again, it's not something I've ever used. I'm grateful for this information!
I tried turning off the "Recover Highlight Hue" option. I changed the tonality but not in a way that made much difference.
There are so many moving parts to On1 PhotoRaw that despite using it intensively and with great success for several years now, sometimes I still feel like a beginner. It's great to learn from others. Thanks a lot for your time and generosity!
0 -
Thanks, Brian. That Linear RAW setting seems to be a good move. Maybe if I run it through Topaz DeNoise and back into On1, then work on it in Linear RAW I'll actually get somewhere. I'll give it a try.
0 -
Do people use Linear RAW as the default for most images? I have always left it set on "On1 Standard" but maybe that's not the best approach.
0 -
Owen, I get a fairly decent result starting the Linear raw Camera profile and AI Auto
0 -
Recover Highlight Hue won't do anything in this case because you're working with a pure white. There isn't any hue to be recovered with the highlights in this shot.
All the Camera Profiles except Linear Raw are nothing more than a LUT or LookUp Table that converts one color to another to achieve a certain look. For the Camera Profile it is being applied before any other processing you do.
Like all digital color producing devices cameras see colors in their own way. Canon's are notorious for being red heavy. When I bought mine (Canon), Nikons were producing green tints in their captures. The Import command in the Camera Profiles allows you to import a profile that has been generated for your camera. You can use the ColorChecker Passport to take a picture of a color palette with calibrated color patches. (Calibration is a hardware adjustment. When you 'calibrate' your monitor you are not really calibrating it unless you are actually adjusting hardware settings. This is called 'profiling'.)
Because the palette has known color values in its patches, the color the camera records can be measured and the difference between the recorded color and the actual color can be calculated. That is then used to create a correction factor that gets recorded into a lookup table that tells the software when you want a red of a specific value, say 255, you need to actually produce a red of maybe 253 to compensate for how the color was actually recorded. That profile can then be imported and used to insure the colors are accurate.
It works exactly the same way when you profile your monitor or printer. I even have profiles for both of my scanners.
0 -
Here's a snip
0 -
One again Brian beat me to it lol
0 -
I choose my profile by the image I'm working on but for most of my work I wind up choosing Linear Raw or using a profile I created from photographing the target under the lighting conditions at the time. It's a personal choice.
When I use Topaz DeNoise with an image I set the basic Color & Tone settings first. Sometimes I'll process the image completely before I decide I want to sent it through DeNoise. In that case I will create a version to hold all the processing I've done, then with the original image I remove everything except the Develop panel's settings. I'll export that to a TIFF to send to DeNoise with the Send To… command. When the image is returned to ON1 I'll sync it with the version I saved, except for the Develop panel settings, to recover the edits I've already done. I'll usually have to fine tune it after.
You cannot set a Camera Profile on anything except a RAW image which is why I do the Develop panel settings before sending it off to another program.
0 -
I ran the image through Topaz DeNoise and discovered that that eliminates the possibility of choosing a camera profile in On1. I suppose that's because DeNoise creates a .dng image. Anyway, I played around with it, Whites -52, blacks -38, Highlights -15, a bit of polarizing filter, and a light Dynamic Contrast filter. Oh, and I corrected for some color fringing. It looks OK, but kind of crunchy and not what I would think of as a first-class image. Maybe this series of shots are not destined for greatness.
0 -
Owen, yes, only RAW files can use the Camera Profile setting. That's why I do my basic processing before sending it to Topaz.
0 -
Good suggestion. I'll play with that. Thanks.
0 -
I actually ran some tests on the various ways I could send an image to Topaz and return it to ON1. I returned .dngs and every form of TIFF allowed. The results were kind of surprising. I'll preface them with this: I've read that the .dng files Topaz returns are actually TIFFs embedded into a .dng wrapper. To me that's just more overhead so I stick with TIFFS.
- FILE TYPE FILE SIZE(Mb) NOTES
- DNG 145.6
- TIFF uncompressed 145.4 increased saturation
- TIFF w/ LZW compression 186.2 WTF?!?! HUGE
- TIFF w/ ZIP compression 137.3 darkest image and it was soft
Those were all done by dropping the RAW image file onto DeNoise so I had the option of deciding the return type. I used the exact same settings, set manually, for all images. When I went with the Send to… route the TIFF file returned was 144MB and gave me the best looking results.
0 -
Below is a link to what I ended up with. I followed the suggestions in this thread, then cropped and did some retouching, added some Dynamic Contrast (masked for the birds and the foreground only), a bit of Tone Enhancer, a polarizing filter, and a Big Softy vignette centered on the birds. I think it's pretty good. Certainly something I would share. If anybody has any further suggestions I would love to hear them. Like most of you, I'm sure, I try. for the very best.
Here's the link to the finished jpeg:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oROEgekeXipHqZrsxb3Jx_cTzIm-j4Ed/view?usp=sharing
I learned a lot from this conversation! Thank you Nitin, Rick, Brian, and David. You rock!
Owen
0 -
Brian, your test is most interesting. It will change the way I use DeNoise. Thanks!
0 -
Nicely done Owen. Glad I could be of help.
0 -
Brian, if I bookmark this thread will it be accessible later? Lots of valuable info here.
0 -
Yes, the threads are maintained.
0 -
Great. I have bookmarked it. Thanks again.
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
27 comments