Meanwhile, back in the LAB

This blog hasn’t been updated since sometime last September.  What I’ve been doing in the meantime is writing a book which is now complete and under review at a publishing house. It’s 45,800 words long, with over 240 illustrative photos.  The title is “Explorations in Photography,” and its purpose is to help advanced amateur photographers improve their artistic skills.

Finishing and editing was a big undertaking, and now that it’s done, I can get back to taking, editing, and restoring photographs – and writing about all of that good stuff.

Only recently pixel-peeper-and-nit-picker-in-chief Ken Brown called me up to not to suggest I check out a certain book, but to order me to buy a copy forthwith!

As usual, Ken was right.

It turns out that hidden in Photoshop, lurking in some of the disagreeably complex functions, such as “Mode,” is Lab Color (more properly CIELAB or L*a*b) color.

I am not a LAB guru.  I’m an experimenter and dilettante, for the moment at least.  THE guru of LAB is Dan Margulis, whose book on the subject is lively but intense.  It’s available through Amazon, and the full title is Photoshop LAB Color:  The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Color Space.  Just search for Canyon Conundrum and you’ve got it.

LAB color actually has nothing much to do with laboratories.  It stands for Luminance Channel, A channel, and B channel.  Luminance handles all the light-to-dark information in an image.  The A channel handles green and magenta, while B balances Yellow and Blue.

What makes this scheme special is that in RGB color, which we (and our cameras) use every day, when you adjust color, you adjust exposure as well, whether or not you want to.  That’s why RGB workflows encourage you to make your color corrections first, then adjust exposure and all the rest afterwards.

In LAB color space, there is no connection between color and luminance, at least technically speaking.  You can set your colors, then adjust your L values, just as in RGB space, BUT there are two main differences:  what you do to color doesn’t affect luminance (and vice-versa).  And you cannot alter red (magenta) without affecting green, and you can’t change yellow without affecting blue.

This is confusing.  Yup.  Sure is.  But practically speaking, LAB offers you opportunities RGB, with its linkage between luminance and color, can’t provide.

1.     LAB works best on underexposed images with lousy contrast.  You can fix the color, THEN mess with the contrast (luminance values) using a Curves Adjustment Layer.  When you’re in LAB color, you make adjustments using a curves adjustment layer is.  When you create the curves layer, Photoshop automatically sets it up with L, a, and b channels.  Each has sliders and a graph, and in later versions of Photoshop, a light gray histogram which makes life very easy.

2.     You can achieve much more “natural” or “realistic” color than you can in rgb.  Green grass can be made to look realistic, as can leaves:  both are a real problem in rgb color space. “Misty Pond” gives a good example of this ability. 

Misty Pond, as edited in RGB

Misty Pond Edited in LAB for a more natural color

Matanuska Glacier detail, as shot

Matanuska detail edited in LAB

Screen shots showing RGB editing, left, and LAB editing, right.  The right-hand version is probablyunobtainable in RGB.  You have to edit in LAB, then convert back to RGB.

3.     You can “bump up” color without touching luminance; this means that effectively you can increase contrast without losing details in deep shadows or highlights.

Glacial Grooves, best RGB

Glacial Grooves, LAB.  Note how contrast has improved

4.     For advanced users, you can do a wonderful job on skin tones.

The essential things to remember about LAB space are two, and they are hard to get your head around.

First, in LAB space, luminance has nothing to do with color.

Second, in LAB space, any change to magenta affects green, and any change to yellow affects blue.  And vice versa.  Of course, the a and b channels react together to crate the color for your image.

Both freedom and madness this way lie.  In the words of the song, “You can’t have one without the other” – for color.  But you CAN have one without the other for light as separate from color!  My advice:  go experimenting.

The madness part is that it’s possible to do some very funky things with color … and it’s hard to learn to deal with a color space in which a 1 % change in either a or b channel can significantly change you image.  Gently, gently is the word.

LAB works best, as I said, for handling flat and monochromatic images.  Images with vibrant color may already be just peachy in RGB.  But in my experience LAB allows you to create a greater sense of depth without sacrificing details, and it can just plain blow you away.

I’m including a handful of examples.  Some show the best I could do in RGB, then in LAB color.  Others show the “as shot” version and the LAB corrections.   Put on your fantasy caps for some of these!

Finally, for readers who have stuck with me this far, I’ve constructed a couple of simple “get you started” Photoshop actions to automate basic steps for you.  You can get this action for free, just for asking. I'll email it to you. The first action pops you into LAB space, intensifies existing colors by 10% without touching the L channel.  The action leaves you at the L channel, ready to play with lightness and contrast.  The second action adds a small amount of sharpening to the L channel only, then puts you back into RGB space, ready for further editing.  You can download the action HERE

Obviously, these are just to get you started.  Life in the LAB can be a rich, fast, and intriguing place to live!

Eric's Rules for Successful Travel

I started traveling at the age of three and haven’t stopped yet.  I’ve been (and worked) on three continents, all 50 states, and heaven knows how many countries.  My first extended trip on my own was a summer spent in France at the age of 17. I had a great time and learned all sorts of things not on the approved list of educational experiences … the most important being I could survive on my own when things got tough. (The next most important was to avoid white wine and stick to red, but that’s another story).

In the past five years I’ve made extended trips through New England, the American west, northern Canada, and Alaska, plus some time in Hawaii.

All of this has led me to some rules for successful traveling.  They apply broadly, but ESPECIALLY to photographers.

Rule 1.  Know your objectives.  What are you traveling for?  The answer can be anything you want – see the Alps, swim in an ocean, photograph a glacier, meet the locals — but it helps to have some objective to shape your trip and keep you going.

Rule 2. Research your destination.  The internet has made this a snap, but it helps in setting your objectives and giving you some clue as to what you’re letting yourself in for.

Rule 3. Don’t over-plan. Nothing kills a trip like trying to do too much.  “If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium” really sucks because you won’t be able to process your experiences.  If you commit to too many stops, too many locations, you’ll be frazzled and disappointed when it rains, or the road is closed, or the bus is late.

When I travel, I like to make a list of things I want to see — and give myself permission to skip any or all of them if something really interesting takes priority.  Dwight Eisenhower said “Plans are useless, but planning’s essential.” He was right, because circumstances force plans to change – and the more detailed the plan, the more likely it is to go wrong.  Avoid over-planning to build flexibility into your trip.


Rule 4. Use tours judiciously.  


Tours can help you or louse you up.  If you have little time and no knowledge of the place you’re going to, tours are valuable. Tours can familiarize you with your destination.  They can also take you places you simply couldn’t reach (or understand) on your own.  In Alaska last summer I took only two tours:  one through Denali (you can’t really do it any other way) and one from Stewart for a wildlife and glacier cruise.  Worth absolutely every penny!

But for travelers who want to experience a place, not just see it, tours are only useful for a quick overview.  Use the next day wander around or revisit some of the places you craned your neck to see from the bus. The other main drawback to tours is the limited time you spend at a stop.  Photographers frequently need far more time than the tour guide wants to spend.

Hiring a local guide for the day may be affordable and is a great way to get access and local knowledge without jamming yourself onto a tour’s schedule.  Worth considering – even if you have to team up with a couple of other travelers to keep the cost down.


Rule 5. Make sure you can meet local people.  They are your best resource for finding great places to eat, great places to photograph, and great places to avoid.  But how do you do this?

1. Sleep in pensions, campsites, hostels, inns, farmhouses, or B&Bs rather than large tourist hotels.  The place you wind up in may be splendid or perhaps less than that, but you’re trading off luxury for experience and local knowledge.

2. Go to the bar and strike up a conversation.  Buying a drink or two makes it easy!

3. Ask at the local tourist bureau or welcome center to suggest good spots to meet locals.  I did this in Fort Simpson, Canada and wound up a day later on a free ATV trip back into some mountains, along with a really interesting conversation with some First Nation folks, and the most incredible dog I’ve ever met – but that’s another story.

4. Ask these two questions.  They work every time.

1. ”You’re from around here.  What should I photograph (or see) that isn’t on every postcard – maybe some place that’s special for you?”
2. “Who else should I meet while I’m here?”

These two questions are the absolutely best ways I know to make sure you have a wonderful trip.  (See The Marvelous Act of Asking Your Way).

Rule 6 Don’t overpack.  This is a tough one, particularly for photographers, as we NEVER travel really light – the gear weighs us down. But make the effort – every ounce you pack is an ounce you have to schlep, and they all add up!  My rule of thumb is pack so that I can carry it all at one time.  This means minimizing separate pieces by doing things like making sure your tripod fits into your rolling duffle, and that your lenses are multi-purpose rather than primes.

The truth is you WILL overpack.  But truly, it’s worth making the effort to minimize.  Really minimize.  Just don’t forget the toilet paper if you’re going into the wilderness!. 

Rule 7  Figure out how to keep your images safe. I usually travel with a laptop and a portable hard drive.  Every night, religiously, I empty my memory cards onto the laptop and duplicate them onto the hard drive.  Then I pack the laptop and the hard drive in separate locations. I usually travel on my own so I can find time to edit out trash shots while I’m at it, thus saving space.

Rule 8.  Take good notes.  I use a digital tape recorder for this … I can record locations, impressions, etc very easily for later use at home.  Keeping a geotag log is a great idea.  Your smart phone can even do this, and so can many cameras.  External geotag units are available as well.  But there’s nothing like being able to pinpoint when and where you took that superb shot of a golden eagle swooping up a gopher in the setting sun!

Rule 9.  Consider your power needs and get whatever you need before you leave home.  You have to make sure you can recharge or replace batteries, get online if you have to, have enough memory cards, etc.  Verify what power you need (110v or 220v) for instance, and match it (or get a converter rated not to fry your gear) to the power grid where you’ll be traveling.  We live and die by electronics these days, so make CERTAIN you are covered in this regard.

Rule 10 and one of the best.  Never be afraid to ask for help if you need it. Like asking your way, asking for help appeals to peoples’ best sides. The converse is also true – if someone needs help, be the first to step up and offer it  You may make a friend for life, and you will certainly enrich your karma by doing unto others.

Pixels, PPI, and DPI –What They Are and Why They Matter

 Elsewhere I’ve written about resolution, primarily as it applies to sensor design.  In this article I’m aiming at a less lofty goal … clarifying the difference between Pixels Per Inch (PPI) and Dots Per Inch (DPI).  There are lots of explanations out there, but perhaps one more won’t hurt.

Pixels are the smallest light receiving unit (on a sensor) or light emitting unit (on a monitor).  Pixels come in various sizes and density.  Camera sensors measure them in the millions, spread like salt (only very carefully arranged) on a sensor measured in millimeters.  The pixels themselves may be of different sizes, the common range being 5.5 microns (millionths of a meter) to 9 microns.  Since they’re very tiny, you can pack millions of pixels (megapixels of them) onto a sensor.

Pixels on a monitor are different.  They are commonly given in pixels-per-linear-inch.  Despite what you used to hear about 72 per inch (mac) or 96 per inch (PC), most monitors have between 90 and 105 pixels per inch.  If your screen actually has a pixel density of 100 per inch, that means you’ll have 100x100= 10,000 in one square inch of screen.  Compare that to the millions per square inch on your sensor.

Obviously pixels on a monitor are far more widely spaced and hundreds of times larger than the pixels on your sensor.  The space between pixels on a monitor is called “pitch” and is commonly on the order of .27 or so millimeters between each pixel.

I’ll get to the so-what of all this in a moment; but first let’s look at DPI.

DPI – dots per inch – has nothing to do with sensors or monitors.  It has everything to do with print quality.  DPI is the number of dots of ink sprayed on the paper by an ink-jet printer.  For normal print sizes and magazine use, 300 PPI is the common standard for image files you send to newspapers, magazines, and labs like Bay Printers or WHCC; below that, the image simply won’t print well enough for magazine or book use when converted to DPI; art directors are just persnickety that way.*

So size your print file at 300 PPI and you’re golden, right?  Well, maybe not.  First, very large prints do not need to be printed from 300 PPI files.  I’m talking really large – 20 x 30 inches up to by 20 x 30 FEET.  For instance, the graphics on airplanes are printed at 25 dpi.

Why?  Two reasons.  First, the bigger the print, the bigger the file needed to produce it.  If you wanted to print a file for printing 20x30 feet at 300 ppi, you’d need a file measured in terabytes! (7.77 BILLION dots).  And you still have to convert image data to printer data; watch out!       

The second reason is that human eyes aren’t that good.  When you watch a TV across a room, it looks pretty sharp – even though the screen pixels are separated quite widely.  That’s because your eyes don’t see well enough to see each screen pixel separately; we merge them together and form the image in our brain the way we think it OUGHT to look.

So billboards and airplane graphics don’t need to be printed at 300 dpi or more to look sharp.  If you’re seeing them from 150 feet away (and that’s WAY closer than you want to see the tail of an airplane near you), they’ll still look sharp at far lower density.  So what if up close they’re awful?  Doesn’t matter, and processing files does matter in terms of both time and equipment.  So thank heavens for human limitations!

In fact, the further away an object is, the less clearly we can see it – thanks to atmospherics and some laws of physics and physiology that we don’t need to mess with.

So, for ordinary purposes, you should try to size your image to print at your chosen size at 300 PPI, or no less than 250 (which will still look soft).

Wait a minute.  Your camera and computer are seeing images in pixels per inch – but your printer is using dots per inch.  How do you get from one to another?

The best explanation I’ve seen comes from Josh Lubbers, head of BlueCubit Software, and an old hand in the color wars.

Customer has a 300 PPI image open in their application that they wish to print.  They click Print and send the file to the print control panel for their Epson Printer.

Printer Driver resizes the 300PPI image to 720PPI using nearest neighbor (low quality) or Bi-Liner (low quality) interpolation.  This happens in 100% of all print jobs that are printed from Photoshop, Lightroom, etc.   Why?  An inkjet printer has a native resolution that all images must be set to in order to print.  The same is true for canon and hp printer but their native PPI is 600 PPI.

Print Driver applies a microweave process that converts the PPI (pixels per inch) to DPI (Dots Per Inch with options for 720, 1440, or 2880 DPI  on an Epson printer- Canon and HP microweave to different sizes).   Printers don’t put pixels on paper; they print dots on paper and microweaving is the process of converting pixels to dots.  There is no Image quality lost in this part of the process but a higher level of microweaving generally results in a higher quality print but a slower print time.

Why can’t you just resize the image in Photoshop (or whatever) to the DPI of your printer?  You can, BUT 1) you won’t see a difference on your screen and 2) file sizes grow exponentially, and 3) the printer driver still has to convert to DPI.

So that’s it.  PPI are pixels, and are electronic.  DPI are ink droplets, and are physical, not electronic. Your print driver takes your image and converts it to instructions to the printer to produce the appropriate DPI for printing.

I can’t close without saying that Josh Lubbers makes ImageNest, a post-script RIP (raster image processor) for Mac OS only, that nests your images (to save paper) and resizes them.  Version 3.5 bypasses the whole Epson or HP printer driver thing and uses a FAR superior method of up-rezzing (enlarging), and it also has a built-in sharpening routine that gets applied AFTER the image is sized for printing.  As RIPs go it’s inexpensive, and upgrades are always free.  Yowzah!

* See “A lesson in humility."

Eric's Quick Fish Chowdah

This fish chowder has lovely color, sweet, filling taste, and is very healthy.  Great on cool autumn evenings.  Enjoy!

1 stalk celery
1 good-size onion
1/2 red bell pepper
1 large baking potato or golden potato
kernels from 2 ears corn (white is best).  Use canned or frozen if desperate.
1/2 lb white fish.  Catfish is good; others work fine
1 TBS oil
1 TBS butter
4 cups milk
2 cups water
salt
pepper
pinch saffron*

Peel and cube potato
Coarsely chop onion, pepper, celery
Cut fish into chunks
Scrape off kernels

Heat oil in stew pot.
Sautee onion, pepper, celery til tender
Add liquid
Add potatoes
Add fish
Add corn

Add seasonings.  Don't over-salt.

Bring gently to a weak boil. You don't want to scald the milk.  Simmer 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Add butter near end of cooking. Serve with biscuits and salad.  

Serves 4-6

*  A word about saffron.  Saffron is expensive, particularly when purchased in packets of 4-6 threads. Go ahead, be a sport and spring for an ounce of the stuff.  Keep tightly sealed and it will last for at least a decade.  Then when you use it you won't be mingy and parsimonious, feeling guilty all the while.  Saffron works with lots of stuff, and you don't need to use a ton of it in any one dish, put a small pinch is about right for most purposes.  Not 2-3 threads.  Yeesh!

What to do when your photos are flooded

A lot of people in the Northeast are trying to recover from flood damage.  One of the most heart-rending losses is when photos get waterlogged, stuck to each other, or stuck to glass.  Professional photo restoration experts (like Hatch Photo Fix) can fix a lot of this damage, but there are number of things flood victims can do to help themselves.

The first thing to do is put your wet photos face-up on towels.  Separate them; don't let them overlap or be in piles.  The idea is to get air circulating around the pictures, so running a fan in the room will help as well.  Keeping air moving reduces the amount of mold that forms on the picture. (Mold shows up as small spots, black, white, red, or green).

If you have photos that are stuck together, but only for a day or two, you can try this:

Get a jug of distilled water and a shallow pan (tupperware is fine).  Put the stack of pictures in the pan and cover with the water.  Wait one hour and try to separate them.  Let them soak another hour and try again.  Finally, add ONE DROP of liquid dish soap to the pan, and go one more hour and try again.

What's happening is that there's a race between separating the pictures and lifting the actual images off the underlying paper, which is non-recoverable.  So keep an eye on things.

The same technique works for pictures stuck to glass, but the soaking time may be longer. What I do when dealing with images stuck to the glass is clean the glass, scan the image through the glass, and THEN try separating.  That way you have a back-up to work from.

If your picture has acquired a really nasty curve from drying unevenly, here's a way to flatten it, at least temporarily.  I actually did this with an 1898 8" x 48" panorama of a cavalry regiment, rolled to the size of a diploma for over 80 years,  and it worked, at least long enough to have a working copy made.

Take your picture, several towels, and a 2 pieces of shelving to the nearest Y or gym with a steam room. In the steam room put one towel on the bench, put the picture curl-up on the towel.  Put the second towel on top, and crank up the steam.  15 to 20 minutes is probably enough to start the paper relaxing.  At this point add a shelf to the stack, and add some additional weight if you want (sitting on the shelf might work, but those splinters!).  Go into the steam room periodically (every 5 minutes is good), and when you judge your paper is as relaxed as it's going to get, turn the stack over and add the second shelf.  Use large rubber ands to hold the whole assembly, and go on your way rejoicing -- as far as the nearest frame shop where you can have your image safely dry-mounted.

Creating A Fine Art Landscape

My friend and fan, Reggie, saw a copy of the Cincinnati twilight image above and asked me to tell him everything that occurred from taking the picture through final processing.

I thought that might be easy, but as I thought about it more I realized that there were far more steps involved than I had thought; while I don’t produce any polished images on autopilot, there are so many routine steps (which can vary in sequence) that I’ve never listed them out. Perhaps it’s time I did.

The photo really began about the middle of May, when a commercial client of mine said that he would really like to have current pictures of the Cincinnati skyline. In the past year or so the skyline has really changed; now it’s dominated by a tall building with the “cage” or “tiara” on top. It’s supposed to be the crown on the Queen City of the West (as Cincinnati was known up til 1875 or so).

Cincinnati looks pretty pedestrian during the day, but at night it takes on a certain magic. Unfortunately, in the middle of summer the weather does not help with landscape photography. The problem is haze. I wanted a picture that would be clear, sharp, and with good sky color behind th buildings. This meant waiting for a clear cool day in the summer time, which in Cincinnati is like waiting for hell to freeze over, or a cold front to come through, which ever happens first!. It also means timing a shot so there isn’t too much moonlight; it tends to wash out the sky.

Finally, on July 14, the magic weather conditions occurred. In the late afternoon sunlight my friend Tina Karle joined me to shoot on the Kentucky riverfront, and then we moved uphill to the Newport Catholic Center. Since I was last there two years ago the view of Cincinnati has been narrowed by new condominiums and by trees which have grown to block some of the field of view. But there was still a very narrow space of lawn available that gave a good view of downtown Cincinnati.

Setting Up

We positioned ourselves carefully to avoid reflected light pollution from lawn-mounted search lights that illuminate the building after dark. The next step was getting the tripod stable and dead level. If you’re thinking of stitching images to make a panorama, getting a level camera is very important. It avoids distortion and gives you the maximum usable pixels to work with.

Once the camera was set up it was really a matter of experimenting with lenses exposures and making sure that the camera would have as little vibration as possible.

Vibration Reduction

Here’s the deal with detail-loaded landscape shots that you expect to print at very large sizes (like 30 x 60 inches).  Any form of vibration kills you.  You cannot be too careful about this, because it’s the limiting factor between a great shot and a mediocre one.  What happens is that even the smallest camera shake – invisible at normal sizes – creates a blur at very large magnifications. Imagine you have a 6 x 4.5 cm sensor (medium format size). That gives you a “negative” that’s 27 square centimeters, or  4.18 sqare inches.  I don’t care how many megapixels you’ve got, if you blow your 4.18 in “negative” up to 24 x 30”, you now have an image that is 720 square inches.  That’s a little less than 175 times bigger than the original “negative”.  If you blow ANYTHING up by a factor that large, the least little thing that’s wrong is going to look monstrous in the final print.

Camera shake isn’t the only variable.  The size of the sensor, camera shake, lens sharpness, focus, atmospheric haze, heat “shimmer,” and ground vibration all matter if you are shooting with wall-size prints in mind.

Exposure time increases the risk of camera shake.  This shot was a 10 second exposure, during which NOTHING could vibrate.

I took the following steps to minimize vibration:

1. Good tripod, rated for my 5 pound camera.
2. Solid footing for tripod.
3. Pre-focus (manual)
4. Camera mirror pre-up (so it doesn’t cause vibration when you take the shot)
5. Self-timer set to 3 seconds to give thing time to settle down.
6. When you press the shutter, take one or two steps backward (gently) so your lead feed don’t cause camera shake during the exposure
7. Don’t move til you hear the shutter click shut

Camera and Lens

This time out I was using a Mamiya 645 AFD medium format camera with a Phase One P25 (22 megapixel)back (long since obsolete, but still does a great job). I used 3 lenses:  a 35 mm wide-angle (about 20 in SLR speak), a 55-110 f 3.5 (about 30 to 65 in SLF terms), and a 120 mm manual focus lens, one of the sharpest lenses ever made.  This particular shot was made with the 120 MF, exposed at ISO 100 for 10 seconds at f8.0. 

Exposures

The selected shot was one of a series of 4 exposures shot at varying exposure times with an HDR experiment in mind.  This was the best overall exposure, but despite the 9 stop dymamic range of the P25 back, there were some issues to be dealt with later in the computer.  specifically, at that exposure length, brightly lighted highlights are going to lose detail, notably the brightly illuminated signs and the flood-lit “tiara.”  Note:  the light was changing very rapidly at this time, when twilight was turning into night.  So you have to keep metering, or at least varying, to adjust to changing conditions.

I used – gasp—a light meter (Seconik 350) to get an overall-reading. 

The actual exposure was ISO 100, f8, 10 seconds.

I chose f8 for maximum sharpness.  If I’d shot at f5.6  for 6 seconds the image might have been less sharp and would have had more shadow detail, but you have to choose your enemy:  highlights or shadows and sharpness.

ISO was set to 100.  This particular digital back is an older one and has some serious limitations newer models don’t have.  Theoretically you can shoot at ISO 800, but you are dealing with massive noise.  I never use this camera at more than ISO 200.  The intention is to limit noise, but the price you pay is longer exposure times.  If I had another $20,000 to spend, I’d get the update.  Hah!

Color balance

I shot in “daylight” mode.  This preserved the blues, but needed a minor correction later.

Back in the Dark Room (computer, of course)

I use a combination of post-processing tools.  Adobe’s Camera Raw does a truly crappy job interpreting Phase One raw images:  Camera Raw thinks you’ve underexposed every shot by at least 2 stops.

Accordingly, I use Capture One Pro, version 6.2.  This software is a pain in the butt (for me at least) in downloading and selecting files, but it is an absolute champ at displaying and editing RAW images … including those from Nikon, Canon, etc.  The current version gives you all the local editing techniques of Bridge or Lightroom, plus it gives you the ability to store variants and output them to various formats.  This isn’t needed by amateur shooters, but remember, my purpose is to produce terrific HUGE prints.

Once I’ve done most of the editing in Capture One, I process the file and save it as a TIFF file, original size, 300 PPI. From there I will open it in Photoshop and make final corrections, including things like removing the streak of crud in the upper left corner of the image–I don’t know if it’s a jet contrail or crud I couldn’t get off the lens.

Editing Workflow in Detail

After setting up my various working folders (select, output) I go to work on the image. 

In general, one should tackle color balance first because it affects exposure and other variables down the road.

Here is a screen shot showing the unretouched file, with the original color balance.  The next shot shows the color re-balanced; in this case I just went from daylight to P25 product flash – and presto, all warmed up, as in the next screen shot. 

Add caption

Fixing Color Balance -- After

You can also see the histogram in these screen shots.  This is a fundamentally dark image, with a tiny cluster of pixels all the way to the right side.  Reds are actually not very bright colors (see http://hatchphotoartistry.blogspot.com/2010/02/red-and-black-small-look-at-autofocus.html), blues are dark, so even though the image looks bright enough to the eye, the camera doesn’t see most of this scene as much above middle gray.  You can’t auto-correct this kind of picture because the software will seek to balance the image – and this one is intentionally NOT balanced.  But those tiny bright spots are blown out, making it hard to see detail in the glare of the very bright lights on the Central Trust building and the Tiara.

Exposure Corrections

Moving to the next panel, I’ve made only very minor changes to this picture.  I wanted to be careful to get good contrast but not too good, and I moved the black point in the curves window.  In the HDR panel I did dial down the very bright areas (the bank tower and the tiara), but more work would be done on those problem spots later.

Verticals Straightened (hard to see at this scale)

The next step was to straighten the verticals.  Despite all my care, the camera wasn’t 100% level, so the verticals were out of plumb by about 1/2 a degree.  Not much, but I wanted to fix it.

Removing Dust & Crud

The next screen shot shows dust elimination.  You can do this in Lightroom or Bridge just as well, but it’s easier in Capture One.  In Photoshop, you can just use the spot healing brush.

What I did NOT do in CaptureOne was sharpening.  That gets done at the very end of the process, when the image is set to its final size.

I saved this version as a hi-resolution TIFF file, and also saved the other three files in the set.

Over to Bridge / Photoshop

I opened the file in Bridge because I wanted to play a little with the color.  Bridge lets you control the luminance (brightness) separately for a number of different colors, including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, magenta, and purple.  You can also control hue and saturataion for those same colors.  For this image, I wanted to tweak the luminance of the orange, but in the end I left it where I found it in Capture One.

I decided to get cute and do something about the blown-out highlights.  So I opened a program called HDR Express and built an HDR composite.  Saved this, and opened it in Photoshop.

Next, I opened the master image in Photoshop.  It’s as-shot size is 18 x 14 inches ( produced the web image  straight from this version).  I decided to make a panoramic version 18 x 9 inches.  Again, no extra sharpening at this point.

Blown highlights

Fixed Highlights

I made a loose selection around the areas of the HDR shot that had been bothering me, pasted them into the master as a new layer.  Cut the opacity to 40%, repositioned each element (I hadn’t straightened the verticals in the HDR composite, so had to tweak the imported materials to get ‘em perfectly aligned.  My bad!)  BTW, the HDR version of the shot looked lousy (as it too often does in my opinion) But it was kind of a nifty way to handle this particular problem.

Sharpening, Noise Control, and Resizing

 I could stop here with this picture. It does not seem to suffer from excessive noise. It’s sharp enough for all normal purposes. So why not quit? I said at the outset that my goal is to produce very large prints at very high quality levels. In this league, 9 bit by 18 is a starter kit! I’m pretty sure I have a client who would love to have this picture at 15 x 30, and to do that requires some extra steps.

I have learned very painfully that if you want to enlarge an image to really big sizes, you absolutely should not sharpen it first! Even using the very good sharpening routines in Capture One and Photoshop, once you go into enlarging the image you affect the sharpening already done, giving a very grainy, over-sharpened texture to the picture. Edges look really hard although they may not have halos, and the overall effect, while painterly, isn’t always appropriate. To avoid this problem I use a program called Perfect Resize. In an earlier life this was known as Perfect Fractals.

Sharpening Off (Perfect Resize) 100% crop

Sharpening On (High pass method).  VERY small amount used

Perfect Resize has 3 different sharpening routines built into it. By experimenting, I have found that even if you don’t use it to do its main job of enlarging, it does a very good job of sharpening. The 2 screenshots shown here illustrate that. These shots show a selection from the picture at actual pixel size, that is, 100% magnification. The image, however, has been left at its 9 x 18 size. I will have absolutely no problem getting a superb print at 15 x 30. I know this because I have already pulled the print 25 x 50 from the same series of pictures, and it looks terrific!

There are lots of different ways to control noise. In the days of film noise was the equivalent to graininess in the film, and the faster the speed of the film the more grainy it would be. Nowadays, the higher the iso-value you shoot at, the more noise you have. If I had shot this picture at a higher iso value or for a much longer exposure, it would have had some noise in it.

Once I’ve enlarged the picture to its final size and included sharpening, I take look at the image in Photoshop and see if extra noise crept in. If it has, I run a noise reduction program to take care of it. The one I use is Noise Ninja. I find that it does a good job overall, and if you need to tweak the controls you can do it. This particular image doesn’t seem to me to have significant noise problems even at 15 x 30 so I’m not going to run subsequent routines on it.

 There is an argument about when you should reduce noise. Noise reduction works by applying a small amount of blur to grainy areas of the image, then re-sharpening them using unsharp mask to keep them from being too blurry. Some people say you should do this before enlarging and some people say do it after. I tend to do it afterwards.  In this case, noise was not an issue so I didn’t bother with noise reduction.

So, as Reggie requested, that’s the soup to nuts account of the creation of this image. I know it will be too detailed for some, but the enthusiastic amateurs out there and some pros may get some pleasure in it and education from it. Here's the finished picture -- definitely not full sized.  You can see it here:

Twilight Cincinnati finished

Whatever happened to Comity?

Last night my wife and I were discussing the egregious failure of the legislature to work collegially towards any kind of solution to any kind of problem.  “Whatever happened to comity?” I asked.  “What’s comity?” she replied.

 “Comity is courtesy and considerate behavior towards one another. It’s also involved with goodwill and reasonableness.” I answered. 

Comity is an old-fashioned word and an old-fashioned concept that we sorely could use today.

Everybody’s bemoaning the fact that legislators can’t get along for love nor money. In fact S&P has downgraded the United States credit rating largely because of the fractious behavior during the debt ceiling fracas – it cannot be called a debate. What S&P said they wanted to see was more in the way of cuts and the balance between revenue and expenditure cuts, not unlike the Obama plan. But what they really wanted and are really worried about is the flat-out inability of the United States to govern itself properly.

So thanks to S&P and the Tea Party, I’m approximately 15% poorer than I was two weeks ago.  Millions are even worse off.

How did we get into this predicament? Where did such deep levels of rancor and spite come from? The unfortunate fact is that the United States has not had a united sense of purpose nor a united sense of accomplishment since the day Neil Armstrong hopped out of the Eagle onto the surface of the moon, with one brief exception following 9/11.   And that brief unity was seized upon by George Bush to throw us into an unfunded unaccounted for war that we haven’t left a decade later.  A 2^nd war against Iraq following what could charitably be called lousy intelligence and uncharitably viewed as a lust for war by Bush did nothing to improve cordiality between the houses of Congress.

Following Armstrong’s moon landing we had the thrills of Vietnam,  another undeclared and untaxed war. We also enjoyed the Arab oil price hike and the rise of expensive new social programs which, however expensive at the time, were vitally needed. Those same entitlement programs, with the vast increase of users due to the aging of the population, are now disproportionately expensive. They need to be managed, not discarded.

The Congress has preferred to tell the states what to do in a series of mandated but unfunded changes such as No Child Left Behind and, most recently, the new medical care legislation passed with such rancor one year ago.

In the last few years there’s been a perfect storm of bad economy, climate change, energy hassles, and a population now at 7 billion.  All of this creates a world that really needs cooperative problem solving.  But throw in “culture wars,” massive frustration, and add lunatic legislators who have no clue how to govern.  At this point nobody feels listened to, which dials up the contentiousness factor by at least 10.

Now here’s a possible explanation of why the tone is so universally hostile, not the only reason but a strong contributor. I blame TV and talk radio.  Here’s why:

Over the last twenty-five or so years, TV news has become more and more “entertainment” centered.  That is, TV news now mimics the thousands and thousands of hours of TV drama.  News is about stories, and stories are about people in conflict.  It’s no wonder that in search of ratings, TV news has increasingly and intentionally tried to increase conflict.  As a result, TV “debates” aren’t debates at all.  They’re slanging matches full of interruptions, name-calling, and shouting.  What a model.

Civilized discussion and debate may be relatively dull, but you have to strip out the hostility before people can actually hear one another – at which point common purposes can emerge and problems be solved, not by slapping the other guy down in mid-sentence but by building on what he has to say.

TV isn’t the only source of contentious behavior.  The babbling, ranting, name-calling pundits of Talk Radio have convinced a segment of the populace that hostility is the only way to effect change.  This segment is , unfortunately, unsophisticated enough to be unable to grasp the complexities of economics or the interconnections that willy-nilly now exist amongst all nations.

It’s time we all took a step back from our passions.  God help us if we can’t manage that. We really need to bring the word “comity” back into everyday conversation.

The Debt Ceiling Fiasco

Fundamentally, legislators view their job as adversarial, not collegial.  This is completely contrary to the assumptions made by the founding fathers about enlightened self-interest and collective wisdom.  Personally, I blame the adversarial quality of news broadcasting as one cause, but causes aren't really the point at the moment.

Both sides are savagely defending positions, not pursuing common interests and the collective goal of protecting the nation.  If they could read, our legislators would profit from basic negotiation texts like Getting Past No and Getting to Yes.\

Good negotiation requires finding a win-win solution, which is the opposite of adversarial.

At this point I am so angry with these children that I want to swat their collective behinds.

Like the President, I could live with anything EXCEPT doing this all again in six to nine months.  I would prefer to see soak-the-rich taxation added into the mix.

What I cannot see is continued tantrums, sulks, and "you can't make me' from the infants we seem to have made our representatives.  Yecch.

A Day at the Harrod OH Pork Rind Festival

Just a small summer town enjoying itself and raising money for things like the high school band. The atmosphere was friendly, the tone low-key, and the pork rinds -- uh -- unforgettable.

You can see this in HD format at Eric's Country Matters gallery

In Defense of Comedy, or, How I Met the Muse and Lived

I first came across Thalia sobbing her eyes out in a corner of the stacks at the Library of Congress. She looked like any other neurotic graduate student whose grades were slipping because her lover was grazing greener pastures. Bedraggled, red-nosed, and puffy-faced she obviously needed a sympathetic ear. 

“I’m dying,” she moaned.  “I can’t go on like this.  It’s just too hard.”  I nodded sagely but said zilch while scanning for the emergency phone.  “They just don’t understand, nobody understands any more.  Four thousand years, and suddenly I’m an outcast!  It’s just not FAIR!” she wailed.

Wait a minute!  4,000 years?  What was this?  I sat down next to her on the floor. “Tell me about it,” I soothed.  “Just take your time and tell me what you mean.”

“Well, “ she gulped, blowing her nose heartily on the only paper I had on me, the latest list of regulations governing public forms of address to avoid offending minority persons.  Ma’am, Sir, Miss, and even Ms. had all been cut this time for being sexist or elitist, or both, leaving only “Citizen,”  and “Fellow Human” as preferred forms.  “Hey, you” had survived, for despite its lack of civility it was found to be sexless, non-culturally diminishing, and consequently politically correct and publicly acceptable.  But I digress.

“I’m called Thalia,” said Thalia again, “Do you know what my name means?”

“Not really,” I replied. “Give me a hint, OK?” 

“I’m the muse of comedy,” she said.  “That’s what Thalia means.”

“You’re named for the muse of comedy,” I said, practicing for my Active Listening seminar later that evening.  “No-no-no,” Thalia said.  “You don’t get it.  I’m not named for the Muse of Comedy, I am the Muse of Comedy.  And I’m finally out of a job.  I can’t stand it!”

“My job  has always been to help people see what’s funny about life and find ways to express it.  And now the Thought Police are trying to convince everybody that half the things people have laughed at since Plautus slipped on a banana peel are no longer funny.  But they are funny.  Politically incorrect, but funny! That’s why I feel so bad. I’m done here.  I’m finished.  Maybe Outplacement can get me a job as a news anchor,” Thalia sobbed.

I wanted to stem the waterworks before the valves stuck open, but with the new Personal Invasion statutes just taking effect, I could get fired or go to jail if I even patted Thalia’s shoulder.  So I tried distraction.  “OK, tell me a joke” I challenged her.

“Comedy isn’t just jokes, or even mainly jokes,” she answered.  “To understand why I’m so upset, you have to know where comedy comes from and what makes it work.  Tell me, how do people deal with stuff they aren’t familiar with or don’t understand?”

“Make jokes about it?”

“Sometimes they do,” said Thalia, “but what they ALWAYS do is compare what they don’t know to things they’re already familiar with. People try to fit the unknown into their model of the known, their paradigm.  It’s a survival trait.  You don’t want to try to figure out if a small, round object coming at you is dangerous or not.  There’s not time to think. You just assign it to the class of “rocks” and duck.  It might turn out to be a water balloon or a snowball,  but why take chances?  Duck first, analyze later.”

“What’s this got to do with comedy?  I’m lost,” I admitted.

“It’s like this.  People create the same kind of models for SOCIAL stuff that they do for PHYSICAL stuff.  And we always assess what we know less well in terms of what we’re more familiar with.  Socially and psychologically, we’re most familiar with the people most like ourselves.”

I nodded encouragingly.  I figured I was wrong about the grades.  This Thalia was pretty smart, even if she was a whacko, uh, acting in non-reality-based modalities.

“So what we do,” she continued, “is classify people.  All the time.  Instantly.  In lots of ways.  The first class division is  JUST LIKE US and NOT LIKE US. If they’re not like us, we look for ways to understand them, and grab the most obvious characteristics.  They might be racial or cultural or educational or religious — whatever.  We create classes like Garlic Eaters, or Hindus, or Technicians and assume that every member of the class has ALL the characteristics of the class.”

“That’s pretty unfair,” I said.  “It leaves out too many things about people and it makes their culture just a stereotype.  I don’t do that. I’m careful to respect everybody.”

“What did you assume about me when you first saw me?” asked Thalia. 

“I thought you were a lovelorn grad student,” I confessed. 

“See,” she said, “you put me into a class you think of as Lovelorn Graduate Students.  You weren’t meaning to be unkind, and really, you’ve been nice as can be.  You just did what people ALWAYS do until they know someone pretty well.”

“Once we know someone as a person,” she went on,  “we stop thinking of them so much as class members. Until then, we go by what we think are their class attributes.  And here’s why we laugh at folks who are different than ourselves:  when threatened by the unknown, we protect our sense of US by laughing at the NOT LIKE US.”

“I’m extremely careful to respect the rights of every group,” I rejoined.  “Why do you assume all people are bigots and prejudiced against outsiders?”

“Because the sense of territory and tribe are built-in.  They seem to be genetically hard-wired,” said Thalia.  “That’s not a popular point of view, but more and more evidence suggests it’s correct. Did you know that chimps have over 98% of their DNA in common with us, and they’re the only animals that will seek out and kill members of other bands?”

Thalia was on a roll.  “Besides laughing at differences, or people’s social customs, people like to laugh at  comic personalities.  In Shakespeare’s day this was called Comedy of Humors.  It’s based in the idea that one major trait dominates each person’s personality.  Take somebody and exaggerate some aspect of personality, and that’s funny.  So we get Edith Bunker (the Dingbat) or George of the Jungle (the Schlemiel) or even Mr. Magoo (befuddled old man). It’s amazing how psychological research into personality styles matches up with the old Four Humors popular in the Renaissance.”

Thalia had finally gone too far!  “You’ve done it again,” I accused her.  “You’ve taken people’s individuality away from them and reduced them to psychological types.  And you think it’s funny!”

Thalia shook her head sadly.  “That’s the whole point! Comedy doesn’t aim at  people as whole individuals... it aims at their traits and blows them out of proportion.  It’s the distortion that’s funny! So we can laugh at  Mr. Magoo or the Ellie Mae Clampett (the Ingenue) where we wouldn’t laugh at old  Mr. Stimmer in the next apartment or your niece Sally.  Comedy ALWAYS deals with types more than with individuals.”

“Are you saying it’s a good idea to put people down and slam them for their class characteristics or their individual, ah, differences?”

“No!” she thundered.  “Comedy of Humors and Comedy of Manners are based in  social paradigms, or stereotypes, and don’t have much to do with individuality.  You can’t stop people from stereotyping.  It’s fundamental to the way we process information.  Individuals are ALWAYS bigger and more complex than the classes they belong to.  If you stop at the stereotype, you’re going to be a bigot.  But you don’t stop there.  You have to consider individuals one at a time, person to person.  That’s how to really be fair to everyone.  Of course some people have fallen into this trap and PREFER to see themselves as group members rather than as individuals…but good grief! Enough’s enough.”

“Comedy comes from a place that’s immune to political correctness; it’s linked to our basic drives like sex and aggression and tribal identity.  Some humor can be intellectual and witty, but pratfalls make ‘em laugh every time. Stuff that’s coming out of our darker levels can’t be legislated out of existence, can’t be permanently shut away like crazy Aunt Jane in the attic.  Sooner or later it erupts.  And it’s far better for all of us if comedy is around to defuse these drives.  It’s far better to laugh at  M.A.S.H than to send real soldiers into Iraq, or shoot people coming out of clinics, or blow up peoples’ churches.”

I shook my head.  This was getting confusing, and it didn’t seem very funny.

“Look,” said Thalia, “what is definitely NOT funny is to apply negative class terms to individuals.  It isn’t funny to call someone a  retard, or a bitch, or whatever, especially if your intention in doing it is to hurt the individual.  That’s not in Comedy’s job description. But the Thought Police have made everybody afraid of honest laughter.  That’s why I’m out of work!  Maybe I can try for work  with the IRS.  They have more need for Comedy there than at the Post Office, even. ”

Thalia got to her feet.  And as she wearily shuffled away into the stacks, I looked at the books shelved around us.  And it seemed to me that as she left, the bright gilt lettering on their spines faded to murky brown as the spirit of Comedy was drained from them. Volumes of Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Johnson, Swift, Fielding, Smollett, Pyncheon, Vonnegut, Shaw, rank on rank, an army of unutterable guffaws.....

As I left the library the overcast streets of Washington looked grayer and more drab than ever.  I shrugged, and headed off to my job in the Bureau of Social Sanitation. It was time to go back to work making the world a better place to live.

Highly Dubious Retouching (HDR)

The old curmudgeon asks, what is all this HDR crap?

He has a number of answers.

1.  HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a series of techniques to assist digital photographers to match the dynamic range of the human eye (depends on who you ask, but that's between 9 and 11 f-stops -- a lot, in simple terms). Digital cameras typically have a range of 6 to 7 stops, max.

2.  HDR is used to rescue photos which suffer from camera (or most likely operator) limitations.  If the scene is flat as a pancake, lacking highlights or shadows, HDR can help you create them where they were not.

3.  HDR is yet another means for the talentless to ape the truly creative people who understand light, contrast, and color.

4.  HDR provides endless proofs of HL Mencken's jibe that "no one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public."

The old curmudgeon may be tactless, but he's not stupid.  Still, his less than temperate remarks merit a little elaboration, lest the unwary simply dismiss him with a shrug.

HDR is in fact a procedure to create a dynamically rich image where the original RAW interpreter saw a very limited image.  In short, it's a method of making a silk purse out of nature's occasional sow's ear.

Today there are a ton of gimmick-laden HDR applications.  You don’t need them to achieve a good result –especially if you shoot in RAW.  If you shoot in JPG mode, you're cooked, so fuggedaboudit.  (You may THINK you're OK, but then look at your image at 100% size, that is, 1 image pixel = 1 screen pixel, and you'll soon see how bad things look).  All you really need is one more or less correct raw exposure.  Make three copies of this exposure, set the exposure control to -1, 0, and +1 stops (or more, depending on what you want to accomplish).  Open all three images in photoshop, copy them as layers to a master image, then erase as needed to get the enriched image you wanted.

This is oversimplified, but not by much.  What this basic technique allows you to do is to put details into shadows and bright areas where there were none before, as well as make the darks darker and the brights brighter.

You get better results if you take multiple bracketed exposures of the same scene, knowing you’ll be using HDR techniques back home. If you use three or more registered images (registered means they overlap exactly, which means you use a GOOD tripod. use mirror pre-up, and use time delay so your heavy footsteps and clumsy hands don't cause vibration), you can stack these up the same way as you stacked the light-normal-dark version of just one image in the last example. You'll get even better results than using a single image.  No gee-whiz app needed.

Doing it yourself is the hard way.  Gee, it requires forethought, judgment, patience, and an understanding of what current light conditions and your camera can accomplish. God help you, you actually have to know something about photography to make the most of this technique.  Arrrrgggghhh!  Why go to the trouble when you could let the software do it automatically?

If you take the trouble to do things manually, you can get a rich image that really does go beyond the interpretive software's limitations (RAW images, remember, are 1-0 and that's it.  You cannot open and view a RAW image -- someone's software must do the interpreting of what the 1-0 stuff represents visually).  What you DON'T get is super-saturated colors, ethereal glows (Photoshop's  built-in HDR routine actually has a setting for "surreal"), or butt-ugly, unconsidered color and lighting shifts.

OK, let's assume you are a rank and tasteless amateur who thinks HDR is the greatest thing since cranberry juice and kahlua cocktails. If you're one of that class, you are enamored of the super-duper effects HDR apps can create.  And if you're really good, you can produce images that look like 1960s-era sci-fi magazine covers -- over-colored, air-brushy, with very hard edges.  Yowzah!  Of course if you're not that good, and keep tweaking the controls, you get things that look like a radioactive turtle emerging from a neon-colored mudbank -- only it's a picture of your infant niece, or, worse, your pregnant niece!  Double araaarrrrrgjh!

This is a vital point.  To use HDR, or any image-manipulation tool, effectively, you HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE.  I don't mean you have to put it in words -- but you have to have a vision of what will be the right treatment for THIS image, what will best express the vision and feelings you had in your mind when you took it in the first place.

I'm not trying to discourage folks from trying HDR.  By all means, tinker to your heart's content, learn the plusses and minuses, the ins-and-outs of this technology.  But please, please, DO NOT thrust your baby steps on an unwilling audience, and then expect praise.  At the very least, have an idea in your noggin of what you want to achieve, and how you want people to respond to it BEFORE you play with the buttons, and ABSOLUTELY before you post an over-colored dish of M&Ms and try to persuade us it's an orange souffle.

HDR apps invite the most wretched excesses and encourage people to rely on technology when their inner eye has no clue as to what they want to achieve.  But -- and this is important -- the problem is not in the apps.  Yes, they invite pictures that make the old curmudgeon run for a barf-bag.  But they don't have to be used that way.  Like guns, or helicopters, or motorcycles, they can be used for good or ill. Like any tool, they depend on the judgment and skill of the user to be effective. To be blunt, James Cameron achieved HDR / CGI miracles in Avatar, but very few of us are James Camerons!

Properly used, HDR can salvage deficient photos, enrich good ones, or bring a spot of magic to an otherwise humdrum shot.  But improperly used, HDR is yet another reason why modern photography is so often held in contempt – and so little purchased. 

The old curmudgeon says, "take good photographs first, based on your eyes and your heart and your skills.  Feel free to see what technology can do for you.  But DO NOT thrust your infant failures and bad taste on the rest of us as if you have accomplished something great.  You haven’t, and if you just rely on automated HDR programs you never will."  Amen.