"Advanced" image processing

Alfred Molon wrote:
Just curious if anybody knows techniques to substantially enhance images
taken under bad lighting or weather conditions. For instance if you shot
photos on an overcast, dark day, if there is a way to make these photos
shine. Would it be possible to transform an overcast sky into a nice
blue sky?

Or if you shot images under hazy conditions, with poor visibility, would
it be possible to give these images "vibrance", good contrast and
colours and if so how?
There are a lot of things you can do to punch up a photo, but in doing
so you risk lossing the mood that it captured. The worst part is that
if you go too far you end up with photos that look like Ken Rockwell's.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/gallery.htm

To me a photo is good if it captures at best it can the mood at the
time, if this is grey and overcast so be it.

I have seen people paste a blue sky in a photo that was taken when it
was overcast, not a good look at all.

When I have done heavy editing of a photo to try really punch it up I
find that I might like it, for about 5 minutes but the more I look at
it the more it just seem to look very wrong.

Scott

Alfred Molon wrote:
Just curious if anybody knows techniques to substantially enhance
images taken under bad lighting or weather conditions. For instance
if you shot photos on an overcast, dark day, if there is a way to
make these photos shine. Would it be possible to transform an
overcast sky into a nice blue sky?

Or if you shot images under hazy conditions, with poor visibility,
would it be possible to give these images "vibrance", good contrast
and colours and if so how?

Paint Shop Pro includes filters which aim to do some of this, by contrast
and saturation changes. Look at tools like "Clarify" and "One-step photo
fix".

But you can't turn clouds into clear blue sky (except by replacement), and
there's no way to create shadows from the existing image imformation
(except by guessing where they might be) to increase the dynamic of an
image.

David

In article , Charles
Schuler says...

Wow, what a question. You can replace the whole sky with Photoshop! You
can adjust the heck out of everything!

It's not that easy. If you simply replace an overcast sky with a blue
sky, it will be very obvious for everybody because the lighting in the
rest of the image will not match. Additional steps would be necessary
and I wonder which ones. I'm not even sure you can do that and get a
natural looking result. The other option would be to keep the overcast
sky and process the image to make it look better, but then what would
you do?
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 7070, 8080, E300, E330, E400 and E500 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
Olympus E330 resource - http://myolympus.org/E330/

In article m, Scott W
says...

There are a lot of things you can do to punch up a photo, but in doing
so you risk lossing the mood that it captured. The worst part is that
if you go too far you end up with photos that look like Ken Rockwell's.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/gallery.htm

Ok, these are way oversaturated.

To me a photo is good if it captures at best it can the mood at the
time, if this is grey and overcast so be it.

I have seen people paste a blue sky in a photo that was taken when it
was overcast, not a good look at all.

I once saw a before-after image of an image restoration artist who
successfully managed to replace an overcast sky with a blue sky. The
photo still looked natural. I wonder how he did it.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 7070, 8080, E300, E330, E400 and E500 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
Olympus E330 resource - http://myolympus.org/E330/

In article , Ken Tough says...

Why don't you put an example shot on a webpage somewhere, and
challenge readers to do their best at improving the shot. It's
a fun exercise.

Ok, here is the page with the samples:
http://www.ddde.de/enhance/

Both photos taken in Chongqing (China), one of the most heavily polluted
places on earth. Image 1 shows the Yangtze river and there is heavy
smog. To the left is the JPEG of the camera, to the right the best I
achieved with the RAW converter. You can also download the original RAW
file (compressed as RAR).

The second image has actually already been optimised with the RAW
converter, but you might still be able to improve it.

This is unfortunately the typical situation in the east of China, where
the skies are very often hazy and polluted.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 7070, 8080, E300, E330, E400 and E500 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
Olympus E330 resource - http://myolympus.org/E330/

Greg "_" skrev:

Not really photography at that point, more like image
molestation-bordering on rendering.

Yes, it is about impossible to draw the line, isn't it?

How far you can go depends on what you want to do - do you want to show
the facts as you saw them or just to use the picture as starting point?

In any case, you start even before you press the shutter - by selecting
what is and what is not in the picture. The camera or your computer
adjusts things - the RAW is useless on its own.

I have no problem with adjusting sharpness and colours, in in most
cases cropping is fine too (can be dubious if you cut "unwanted"
persons out).

At the moment I am preparing a picure for a present. It is of a
traditional Algarvian house to someone who likes the style of
architecture - i.e. a representation of a type of house more than a
specific house. I have no problem in removing power lines and TV
areals(sp?), for this purpose I think it is ok.

/Martin

On Oct 31, 11:26 pm, Alfred Molon
wrote:
Just curious if anybody knows techniques to substantially enhance images
taken under bad lighting or weather conditions. For instance if you shot
photos on an overcast, dark day, if there is a way to make these photos
shine. Would it be possible to transform an overcast sky into a nice
blue sky?

Or if you shot images under hazy conditions, with poor visibility, would
it be possible to give these images "vibrance", good contrast and
colours and if so how?

Are you asking for something beyond the sort of LAB processing done by
Dan Margulis in "Photoshop LAB Color -The Canyon Conumdrum and Other
Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace"? Figure 9.15 shows the use
of LAB to get through the haze in Hong Kong.

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.barry.pearson.name/photography/

In article .com,
Barry Pearson says...

Are you asking for something beyond the sort of LAB processing done by
Dan Margulis in "Photoshop LAB Color -The Canyon Conumdrum and Other
Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace"? Figure 9.15 shows the use
of LAB to get through the haze in Hong Kong.

Do you have a link? I've never tried this sort of processing.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 7070, 8080, E300, E330, E400 and E500 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
Olympus E330 resource - http://myolympus.org/E330/

Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Ken Tough says...

Why don't you put an example shot on a webpage somewhere, and
challenge readers to do their best at improving the shot. It's
a fun exercise.

Ok, here is the page with the samples:
http://www.ddde.de/enhance/

Both photos taken in Chongqing (China), one of the most heavily
polluted places on earth. Image 1 shows the Yangtze river and there
is heavy smog. To the left is the JPEG of the camera, to the right
the best I achieved with the RAW converter. You can also download the
original RAW file (compressed as RAR).

The second image has actually already been optimised with the RAW
converter, but you might still be able to improve it.

How about this?
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/mi..._processed.jpg

It was a rush job, just a couple of minutes in Photoshop. I could do much
better if I started with the RAW file and took more time over it, but this
is just to show what's possible in a couple of minutes. The banding in the
sky is due to working on the 8 bit jpeg, this wouldn't happen with the 16
bit RAW file.

I used;
Levels - to set the black and white points
Curves - to brighten the midtones.
Contrast masking - to even out the image (actually I overdid this)
Unsharp Mask with a huge radius (80 pixels) - to enhance the local contrast
Saturation - just a touch to put a bit of colour back (the previous step
tends to lose colour)

Nothing I could do about the sky though.

Much better results are possible though, if you're prepared to spend enough
time on it, but at least this clears the haze.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk

Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Ken Tough says...

Why don't you put an example shot on a webpage somewhere, and
challenge readers to do their best at improving the shot. It's
a fun exercise.

Ok, here is the page with the samples:
http://www.ddde.de/enhance/

OK here is my try at it
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/69541142
Mine has a over processed feel to it and I have to say I like your
version a lot better.
This is pretty typical of what I can when I try to make a photo look
like the day was nicer then it really was.

Scott