Tone Mapped Dirt — Before & After

12/18/2006 10:34:49 AM · #1

I've had several requests to explain "High Pass" sharpening in specific, and how this image was done, in general.

straight from camera

tone mapped but otherwise unprocessed

as entered

The processing, in general, is not very complex once the tone-mapping is done, and the tone mapping is not difficult to do. In this particular case I didn't even layer variant RAW exposures; I just took the base exposure, converted to 16-bit TIFF out of RAW, and applied tone mapping in Photomatix Pro. A little tweaking of the various sliders and it's done. Then in PS7 the geometry was tweaked with the skew tool and hue/sat was run to warm up the colors and tone down the purple shirt at his neck. Then the face was isolated with a loose selection and the High Pass filter was run to crisp up the face details substantially. Gradients in multiply mode were run in from all 4 edges to contain the image, and some local burning on the shirt cleaned up a slight hotspot near the bottom.

After resizing, the whole image was USM'd, and up she went.

What is "High Pass"? It's another form of sharpening/contrast enhancement. It lives in the PS7 filter menu under "other/high pass". It's sort of the opposite of gaussian blur; you load it up and you get a dialogue box that lets you adjust the radius where it seeks an edge effect. The whole thing shows up as a gray overlay with white lines defining the edges that are being accentuated. When you click OK it shows as a gray layer with white details in the layers palette, and you just set the layer mode to "overlay" and it crisps up the affected areas.

It's very easy to overuse on contrasty areas, but really adds zing to flatter areas. The thing about tone mapping is it tends to flatten out images a lot, and using High Pass in conjunction with tone mapping brings sharpness and crispness into these flatter areas. High Pass is NOT basic legal, because it requires a change in layer modes.

R.

Message edited by author 2006-12-18 10:36:11.

12/18/2006 10:40:01 AM · #2

yay!!!! I did it, i did it!:)
thank you so much!! now I have learned something new and it's great!

Svetlana

12/18/2006 10:44:09 AM · #3

Originally posted by silverfoxx:

yay!!!! I did it, i did it!:)
thank you so much!! now I have learned something new and it's great!

Svetlana

Show us! Here would be fine, I don't mind. Good on ya!

R.

12/18/2006 10:47:10 AM · #4

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Show us! Here would be fine, I don't mind. Good on ya!

R.

:) just a second! or two...

12/18/2006 11:25:59 AM · #5

something like this maybe...
I was just experimenting with some old photos, was trying new tricks.
:) it was fun to try! now I know how it works. thank you!!

Message edited by author 2006-12-18 11:46:04.

12/18/2006 11:56:38 AM · #6

That's cool :-) You might be able to get a trace more detail in the blocked up shadows with more aggressive tone mapping if you chose to, and you might want to dial down the blue saturation to kill those blue hot spots...

Something like this, or somewhere in between the two...

R.

Message edited by author 2006-12-18 12:05:30.

pineapple

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

12/18/2006 12:05:24 PM · #7

I think you're an old (I am too) romantic, Robert. :) You're partial to Gothic Glow and HDR to give images a certain lush nature. It's hard to say anything constructive. Part of me is watching how Photomatix is used, and the other part is simply looking at the resulting image for what it is. You certainly enhanced the challenge entry. But then again, that characterful neighbor could also have looked pretty good in a higher contrast black and white. For whatever reason, the original did need some sort of boost. I think the missing eye contact (not necessarily with the photographer) would have enhanced the image even more.

12/18/2006 12:08:21 PM · #8

Originally posted by pineapple:

I waffled back and forth on that eye contact issue. The idea here was the contrast between his very slack, tired expression (with NO eye contact) and the very bright expression (with full eye contact) on the mannequin. It's that play between real/not here and unreal/totally here that intrigued me most in the end.

R.

12/18/2006 12:08:47 PM · #9

this is cool!:) but I made the foreground darker with purpose:) anyway..
here's another version, even more romantic:

pineapple

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

12/18/2006 12:16:06 PM · #10

I see what you mean about the eyes. It's hard for me not to compare such images with those by painter Andrew Wyeth in which the subjects have a certain pathos about them, especially as projected by their eyes or direction of look.

12/18/2006 01:16:42 PM · #11

Robert, I was cheeky enough to edit your photo:/
may I upload it here? it would be interesting to hear what you think.

Svetlana

12/18/2006 01:47:23 PM · #12

Originally posted by silverfoxx:

Robert, I was cheeky enough to edit your photo:/
may I upload it here? it would be interesting to hear what you think.

Sure! Turnabout's fair play.

R.

jfriesen

Panasonic LUMIX GH5

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

12/18/2006 01:51:34 PM · #13

WOW, good stuff Bear.

Carl Zeiss 50mm ZE f/1.4 Planar T for Canon

12/18/2006 01:58:03 PM · #14

I just thought that face in the window, it looks so mysterious, a worker from the 40s and that face in the window...just an idea
:)

yanko

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

12/18/2006 01:59:57 PM · #15

You have good success in the challenges using tone mapping. So far I'm 0-2 using it in the challenges. Here are my two attempts:

I also have more in my portfolio and those seem to get some favs so maybe I'm just choosing the wrong subjects to use it in the challenges.

Message edited by author 2006-12-18 14:00:26.

Melethia

Canon EOS-80D

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

12/18/2006 02:32:35 PM · #16

I wanted to tonemap mine, but couldn't get the key to do it without the watermark in time for the challenge, so this is what I got using Photoshop:
Entry

Original

12/18/2006 02:46:00 PM · #17

Originally posted by silverfoxx:

I just thought that face in the window, it looks so mysterious, a worker from the 40s and that face in the window...just an idea :)

Well, that's certainly different :-) Not a direction I'd go in for sure, but one that suits your style/direction very well. Wonderful what we can do with pictures isn't it?

R.

Canon RF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS USM

12/18/2006 02:58:18 PM · #18

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Well, that's certainly different :-) Not a direction I'd go in for sure, but one that suits your style/direction very well. Wonderful what we can do with pictures isn't it?

R.

yes! it would be extremely interesting to see my photos edited by others.
we can do almost whatever we want and it's great!
:)

hajeka

Canon EOS R5

12/18/2006 07:34:26 PM · #19

Thanks for clear explanation (and the note that you can't use this in a "Basic Editing" challenge. (I'll have to change a photo, I think).

kteach

Nikon D50

Nikon AF Zoom-Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6

12/18/2006 07:53:42 PM · #20

Originally posted by Melethia:

I wanted to tonemap mine, but couldn't get the key to do it without the watermark in time for the challenge, so this is what I got using Photoshop:
Entry

Original

I probably would have deleted that original off my card the first time I saw it thinking it was unsalvageable... nicely done!

Art Roflmao

Canon EOS-6D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

12/18/2006 08:28:29 PM · #21

Originally posted by silverfoxx:

Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Well, that's certainly different :-) Not a direction I'd go in for sure, but one that suits your style/direction very well. Wonderful what we can do with pictures isn't it?

R.

yes! it would be extremely interesting to see my photos edited by others.
we can do almost whatever we want and it's great!
:)

Yes, it's great! ...or is it??

----------------------------------

Great job bear! Congrats on the top ten and thanks for posting the explanation!

samchad

Canon EOS-5D Mark III

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

12/18/2006 11:24:38 PM · #22

Wow. This is awesome. Just downloaded Photomatix trial.
Here's my first attempt. Trial and Error. Any comments welcome as I'm not really sure what I'm doing, just sliding the sliders until I thought it looked nice.

Ohh $99. It's going to be a while then.

skylercall

Canon EOS-7D

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

12/18/2006 11:48:32 PM · #23

Can Photoshop CS2 not do this? How long does the Photomatix trial last?

12/19/2006 12:00:58 AM · #24

Gawd, Art, you're demented!

R.