Experimenting with "dehaze" filter in PP

Haze is a constant problem in the very humid atmosphere in the wet tropics -- yet I constantly forget about the dehaze filter offered in my image editing program of choice, PhotoLine.

A few days ago on my morning walk I spotted a different view of the volcanoes across the harbor mouth (someone had cut down a tree, I think) so today I remembered to take the GX7 with 12-32 lens with me when I walked.

And today an hour after sunrise, it was a bit hazy.

I took a shot to confirm for myself what I was seeing. it looks pretty good -- the volcanoes nicely framed in nearby leaves. A step either way, and the view is ruined.

When I got home, I lightened the image a touch putting the highlights right up against the right side of the histogram and added a little contrast. Then I copied a bit off the tops of the volcanoes and applied the haze filter allowing the filter to calculate the haze. It came up with quite a strong blue -- as would be expected.

I flattened the image -- you can see the effect. The dehazing does a nice job on the volcanoes while the added contrast without the dehazing still leaves the mountains pretty soft and soggy looking. But dehazing takes a lot of color out of the sky. In this case, that would be easy to restore by running around the sky with the Automatic Lasso (which follows contrast) to get a layer of the original sky, then pasting that back in over the dehazed image.

BUT the main thing wrong with this is that I wasn't there yesterday morning with the camera at a suitably early hour to take this same picture with the Sun Princess cruise liner steaming past on its way out to sea after a visit to Rabaul. Aargh -- the missed opportunities!

I'll get the next one, though…if the weather is okay.