Overexposed sky and green clouds - what to do?

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

05/29/2006 01:10:52 PM · #1

I suspect the answer is "don't shoot into or nearly into the sun, stupid!" But assuming I want to do that anyway....

The first shot (unedited other than resizing) is taken at the camera's recommended setting of 1/125 sec (at f5.6), with the sun very low in the sky off to the right. JUST off to the right. The second shot is same position, only using 1/250 sec instead. In both cases, I still get the green clouds issue, and in the second case, I've lost much of the detail in the foreground to boot.

If I try to select the clouds (a task I'm still learning, this select and do stuff with the selection thing), even if I completely desat the green and cyan, I still have some green left in the clouds.

And yes, it's not that exciting a photo, but that's beside the point. I run into this a lot more than I'd like to, this whole green cloud bit. Any advice? Hints? Muchas gracias!

1/125th sec

1/250th sec

By the way, this is one reason I asked GIS_boy about his "Heat" entry, which was shot into the sun and yet still retained detail without getting all sorts of weird effects. Very cool picture if you haven't seen it - and thanks to Matt for posting the details - much appreciated!

dahkota

Canon EOS-7D

05/29/2006 01:31:17 PM · #2

nevermind. didn't mean anything anyway.

Message edited by author 2006-05-29 18:32:48.

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

05/29/2006 01:42:28 PM · #3

Ferociously difficult image to work with. I assume you are shooting in jpg, not RAW? When you're shooting jpg, you have to continually reset your variables for different scenes; in this case, specifically, I think you are working with too much contrast. That exaggerates the color throw in the sky. If you work in RAW, you can adjust white balance, contrast, and so forth much more precisely in the RAW workflow.

I took a stab at it here, working from the underexposed version:

Did contrast masking, two passes, both with multiply and screen on brights and darks, respectively. In the second pass, I did them at around 50%, so total multiply and screen is 150%, give-or-take; that's a LOT, and it flattened the image dramatically.

I then did a cntrl-alt-tilde and a cntrl-j to get yet another brights layer, and I adjusted selective color within that layer to get rid of the green throw in the sky, as much as I could.

Flattened all THAT, did a cntrl-alt-tilde, shift-cntrl-i toinvert selection, and cntrl-j to get a darks layer, and on THAT one I played with the values of the black channel in soft light blending mode to bring contrast back to the meadow.

Finally, I created an empty layer and laid a sky gradient down on that, set the whole to multiply mode, and faded to suit.

It's kind of half-baked, but it's the best I can do on short notice and processing in bright daylight.

R.

Canon EOS-20D

05/29/2006 01:52:48 PM · #4

oops

Message edited by author 2006-05-29 15:22:11.

05/29/2006 02:39:12 PM · #5

Thanks, guys! I know that I really should stick with "don't shoot into the sun, you idiot" but sometimes a girl just has to do what a girl has to do, you know?

Bear, I think your down and dirty worked quite well. But no, I'm NOT shooting in jpeg. I rarely shoot in jpeg if it can at all be avoided. The images are only converted to jpeg here to resize for DPC. They're RAW. The only thing I've ever worked with for RAW is the inherent RAW converter tool in Photoshop CS2. I have to admit I didn't try "tint" or "temp" to see if I could get the green out on these. I usually just open what it gives me.

I'm assuming you'll tell me there's some other nifty tool I need to play with images in RAW, right?

05/29/2006 02:44:21 PM · #6

Originally posted by Melethia:

I'm assuming you'll tell me there's some other nifty tool I need to play with images in RAW, right?

Yeah, ALL of 'em... Here's the deal; at least on MY converter, the displayed image out of RAW uses the camera's settings by default. I have my cam set, for the most part, at auto WB and minimum contrast, sharpness, color saturation, etc. Then when I open in RAW the first thing I do is set WB (if necessary) and fine-tune that. Then I set contrast and color saturation, keeping it somewhat low in contrast and saturation both. I do no sharpening in RAW.

Then I export to file as a TIFF and open it in PS and take it from there.

I don't have any "nifty little tools" other than the ones PS7 gives me. You really need to schedule a visit, dear...

Robt.

05/29/2006 03:40:02 PM · #7

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

You really need to schedule a visit, dear...

Robt.

Yes, that I do. It's hard to be a do-it-yourself PS'er.

I tried a couple of things in RAW, but I think my best bet in situations like these is to wait for a time when the light is more appropriate or convert to B&W. :-)

The pond wasn't the reason I went out to shoot, though. I went to get my trees - an odd little stand up the road a piece, and the pics I had of them from before were on the errant hard drive that crashed. Sadly, the sun ain't in the right place this time of year and the sky was only so-so as far as cooperation. But there was a little fellow who happened by while I was waiting, so I did get a couple of good (read: worthy of not deleting) shots. I'll post thumbs.

But back to my topic - the green in the sky is obviously due to overexposure, right? Is it a function of the glass? The sensor? And how, other than shooting two images and combining them, can one actually shoot in these conditions?

And mk - why did you "oops" your post? Valid points you made...

Trees:

Visitor:

05/29/2006 03:48:40 PM · #8

Originally posted by Melethia:

But back to my topic - the green in the sky is obviously due to overexposure, right? Is it a function of the glass? The sensor? And how, other than shooting two images and combining them, can one actually shoot in these conditions?

I don't know why it's green. I don't have that problem. It's exaggerated by contrast, I think, but...

As for shooting in "those conditions", I do it all the time, and use contrast masking mostly to make my corrections:

05/29/2006 04:01:01 PM · #9

Yep, all of those are similar to the lighting situation I had yesterday. Now if I could just figure out what the problem is. I'm beginning to suspect the kit lens. Of course, this could just be an elaborate plot in my brain to convince myself I can go buy a new lens... I may do some experimenting. Because by gosh, I like shooting with the sun almost in the picture sometimes.

05/29/2006 04:06:57 PM · #10

Originally posted by Melethia:

Let's see... Buy a ticket to arrive in Providence midday June 10th; I pick you up there, we truck over to meet nshapiro and others at the balloon thingie in Springfield, then you come back to the Cape with me for some lessons, and head back to Texas. How's that sound?

R.

05/29/2006 04:11:00 PM · #11

That would be awesome except I have my annual vacation to WestbygodVirginia (yes, it's all one word) the 12th through the 18th. It's a week of golf and being lazy, capped by the "Father/Son" tournament on Father's Day with my dad. And yes, they decided that daughters can play, too.

Since I haven't been playing much golf, I'm really hoping it's not raining the whole time. Last time that happened, dad had me rewire his computers in the office and set up a network for him. I believe my cell phone number is still on a yellow sticky with "Tech support" written next to it. :-)

Artifacts

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Panasonic LUMIX-DMC ZS100

05/29/2006 04:12:37 PM · #12

Though Bear_Music's adjustments to your image is a major improvement it really does not address the fundamental issue of what the color was really supposed to be in the first place and why was the sky green.

An obvious thought is that the image has a green color cast which is very easy to fix with a single "Curves" adjustment layer where you go to the green channel and just drag a center point AWAY from the word green at the top. That is a well known color cast correction method. But it does not work in this case even if you switch the centerpoint where the luminosity values occur. That means it has a different color correction issue than just a green color cast.

It would be best if you could remember exactly what the "real" color in the green area should be and standard color corrections could be applied specifically to address that issue before we went on to make other improvements like Bear_music did. That would help all of us better understand fundamental concepts of color correction in PS.

Message edited by author 2006-05-29 16:13:58.

wheeledd

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

05/29/2006 04:39:48 PM · #13

Deb,

I use the Adobe Camera Raw software that comes with Photoshop CS2. I find it to be much better than earlier versions. I don't think you need to get other software--just figure out what CS2 can do for you.

--DanW

deapee

Kodak V803

05/29/2006 04:41:48 PM · #14

I think your sky is from sensor bloom.

DanSig

05/29/2006 04:49:44 PM · #15

it's quite easy to fix, worked with the underexposed picture for 4 minutes...

05/29/2006 06:17:17 PM · #16

But what exactly did you do?

DanSig

05/29/2006 06:26:23 PM · #17

Originally posted by Melethia:

But what exactly did you do?

worked a bit with levels and curves, used noiseninja to smoothen the image as it got pixelized when boosting saturation.

then I put a dark blue layer over the picture and change settings to color, added a mask and painted over the trees and ground,
added the original image as a luminosity layer, added a mask and painted out the ground so it would only affect the sky.

flattenend the image and added some usm.

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

05/29/2006 06:41:10 PM · #18

Cool! Thanks for sharing that. I need to learn to work with masks more - something I haven't quite figured yet. I'll keep at it, though.

dacrazyrn

Nikon D300

05/29/2006 11:51:45 PM · #19

You can also do 2 different conversions for your photo in RAW. One to "decrease" your sky and one to increase your shadows (ground). And also adjust the tint. Do one and open it. Save as PSD file with the name and an a or b or something at the end. Open a sceond converted the other way. Then you can shift drag the first onto the second. Then you can do the masking thing on the top one to let the bottom show through instead.
Make sense. Involves masking, but that is easy after ya do it a few times. THe Help area is always a good reference in PS. Of course you can't use this for challenge entries.

Message edited by author 2006-05-30 00:09:34.