Sand dune storm at first light: Editing

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

11/30/2004 08:08:38 PM · #1

Posting this because I thought it might be useful. If anyone feels like giving me feedback on it that'd be great too. Think this is a good example of a relatively complex photoshop adjustment on an image. I haven't found a whole lot of these sorts of examples on line that are actually working on photographs and not just digital art type projects. One caveat is that this isn't legal under any of the DPC rules but might well be useful for your normal photographic work. This is also still a work in progress - there are some things I'm not totally happy with though this represents about half an hour worth of work.

A reduced resolution version of the photoshop file, with layers is available for download, at
this link (3Mb zip file) It is saved in Photoshop CS, with the compatibility options on - it can at least be opened in Photoshop 7. Feel free to play around with it.

The final image is constructed from 3 exposures, one for highlights in the clouds, one for the midground and one for the shadows in the foreground. Potentially fewer exposures could have been used, with more challenging issues for dynamic range, noise etc. Using 3 exposures means there is less pushing around of the pixels.

3 sets are used, again one for each exposure. Masks are generated for each set, using channel/contrast masking - ctrl+click on a suitable channel to turn it in to a selection, clicking the mask icon with the set selected to create a mask, then direct editing of the mask to quickly create a mask for the areas to be worked - sky, mid, or foreground.

Healing/ cloning was done on each exposure layer - mainly to remove a bit of lens flare in the midground.

Tonal adjustments - each exposure has a levels and a curves adjustment applied - both in luminosity blending mode. This means that only tonality is adjusted in levels and curves - saturation is not touched. Levels is used to set a black and white point and curves is used mainly to control the contrast in each region. A hue/saturation layer is placed on top of each of these to boost each colour range individually - mainly in the yellow and red regions.

The sky has an additional couple of levels adjustments, with gradient masks applied to those adjustments, to reduce and balance out the influence of the polarising filter. The sky has a natural polarisation as you head towards 90' from the light source, so I didn't want to remove this totally.

On top of all these sets is one final global curves layer used to manipulate the brightness and contrast just a little bit more.

Message edited by author 2004-11-30 20:37:01.

Mick

Canon EOS-5D

11/30/2004 08:19:52 PM · #2

It's a wonderful photo Gordon. It looks like a difficult scene to capture.

Boy, I've been seeing a lot of sand dune photos lately, and not just on this site either. Where was this taken?

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

11/30/2004 08:22:10 PM · #3

Originally posted by micknewton:

It's a wonderful photo Gordon. It looks like a difficult scene to capture.

Boy, I've been seeing a lot of sand dune photos lately, and not just on this site either. Where was this taken?

Death Valley National Park, California. These are the dunes about 2 miles out from Stovepipe Wells. I have a lot more of these if and when I get around to editing them.

TLL061

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

11/30/2004 08:35:54 PM · #4

wow good job

singe

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

11/30/2004 09:14:27 PM · #5

That's a great picture.

I have a dumb question - how do set an adjustment as a layer? i.e. You have the final curves as a layer... how?

-Brad

Sunniee

Canon EOS-40D

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6

11/30/2004 09:21:26 PM · #6

Beautiful work! love the light!

moodville

Nikon D100

11/30/2004 09:31:55 PM · #7

Originally posted by singe:

That's a great picture.

I have a dumb question - how do set an adjustment as a layer? i.e. You have the final curves as a layer... how?

-Brad

Layer > Adjustment Layer > Curves

jimmythefish

Canon EOS-10D

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

11/30/2004 09:34:54 PM · #8

Just a very quick adjustment here, the way this heavy-handed photog would interpret things. I tend to like dark and dramatic. Basically just a bit of a burn, and gaussian blur done on the flattened image.

moodville

Nikon D100

11/30/2004 09:59:39 PM · #9

Originally posted by jimmythefish:

I like dramatic too. I think the changes you've done have darkened the shadows on the foreground dune, though, which seems to go against the point of multiple exposures in order to retain the details. That's not to say it's bad. I think threads like these so people can work on post-processing are great! I like seeing the variety out there.

Alecia

Canon EOS-10D

11/30/2004 10:43:56 PM · #10

my quicky b&w. it's more funner to play with other people's stuff. :)

Message edited by author 2004-11-30 22:52:30.

12/01/2004 08:36:55 AM · #11

I like the heavy handed B&W look too. These dunes have a whole load of texture that and tonal range that make B&W good.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

12/01/2004 10:49:59 AM · #12

Looking at them at least on this screen, I like how Alecia has kicked up the highlights particularly in the blowing sand and dust storm in the background. Might work on the hill/sky transition a bit but it has a lot of drama with all those bright/ dark transitions.

wewillexplore

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

12/01/2004 11:04:18 AM · #13