What do you think of this photo? Too HDRish?

Keit ll said:

ThrillaMozilla said:

Brett8883 said:

This photo is going to be printed at 60x40" on semi-gloss metal and output sharpening for that size and material has already been applied so it will look crunchier and over sharpened on your screen. It's suppose to look good at 10-20 feet away not 24" like a computer monitor.

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That sounds like a very bad idea to me. If it is correct, it should look sharp at any size. We can display it at 1:1 on a monitor, which should be at least as large as the print. If we see haloes or other artifacts, they will very likely be visible in the print. I always tell people that if you can see by any means that I have sharpened a photo, then I haven't sharpened it correctly.

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That is not correct & I have to assume that you don't print your photos? Printing tends to soften sharpness due to diffusion of ink & most people over-sharpen as judged by monitor screen displays, although ,of course,crude sharpening with halos etc will show up in prints

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I'm not sure what you mean by "that". Many people do crudely oversharpen.

I'm not sure the question for me, but the largest I have printed is a 4-foot-long mural.

You say you did not use HDR but want to know if it looks HDR. It obviously gives you the HDR heebie-jeebies. Why? What exactly do you find unappealing about this image? Saying it is HDRish is simply too vague. Be specific. Plus, you said you did not process the image using HDR but you did not describe your processing workflow. What did you do to the original file? Perhaps you could share a link to the raw. That would be ideal.

I suspect the saturation slider has been moved far to the right. To, perhaps, create an impressive pop. Either that or you shot in jpeg using a vivid picture control. Or, maybe, your camera produces unnaturally bright and vivid greens. Would be good to know what you did. Seeing the raw would help. In the meantime, I would go back to the raw, zero the sharpening and leave the saturation and vibrance alone. Post that pic. Mabye we could help you find a nice point somewhere between that and the first version. Maybe a simply processed version has more impact.

tbcass said:

john isaacs said:

David1961 said:

john isaacs said:

The overall exposure looks dark. I would raise the exposure until the sky was proper. And then I'd raise the shadow settings so the shade of the trees wasn't so dark.

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You can't actually adjust the exposure after the shutter has closed but you can adjust the how light or dark the image looks in post.

Only aperture, shutter speed and scene luminance can affect the exposure.

The image looks fine regarding overall lightness on my calibrated and profiled screen.

What brightness did you calibrate your monitor to?

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You should write to Adobe. Because Lightroom has an Exposure slider that does the trick.

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Technically exposure occurs at the time the photo is taken so technically Adobe's use of exposure in that case is incorrect. A better term would be brightness control. I imagine Adobe uses the term exposure because they think less technically informed people would be less confused by the term.

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Question, my tablet has EXPOSURE and Brightness. What the difference as neither is really exposure?

I think the cloudy sky is blah. Rather see party cloudy.

David1961 said:

Brett8883 said:

David1961 said:

Brett8883 said:

So while it isn't changing the amount of light hitting the sensor it is simulating an exposure change and does a pretty damn good job of it

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Yes, it is simulating, not replicating exposure which can be a huge difference especially in low light scenes.

"Exposure" sliders can encourage newbies to be lazy and sloppy in their exposure setting by misleading them into thinking they can adjust the actual exposure in post when they cannot.

For example:

Say you shoot a lowish light scene using

f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 200

when in fact you could have used 1/100s safely.

You look at the image in your raw editor and it looks too dark for your liking.

So you think, no matter I'll just bump up the exposure slider by 1 stop and it now looks good.

But, your bumped up image will have more visible noise in it than if you took the original image using 1/100s, even though the image lightness of the bumped up image will be very close to what it would have been with 1/100s.

It is low exposure - amount of light that hits the sensor per unit area - that causes visible noise.

Exposure and image lightness are too totally different things and it's when people confuse them or use them interchangeably that they can get themselves into a muddle and their image quality suffers, especially in low light.

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I understand what you are saying and can see where there could be confusion if you tell someone to increase exposure and they don’t if you mean in camera or in post (which I think is what happened in this thread)

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Yes, I can see some people are clearly confused by or do not understand the clear difference between image lightness and exposure.

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So software wise whats the difference between brightness and exposure (the labels for software editing)

Toronto Photography said:

David1961 said:

Brett8883 said:

David1961 said:

Brett8883 said:

So while it isn't changing the amount of light hitting the sensor it is simulating an exposure change and does a pretty damn good job of it

Click to expand...

Yes, it is simulating, not replicating exposure which can be a huge difference especially in low light scenes.

"Exposure" sliders can encourage newbies to be lazy and sloppy in their exposure setting by misleading them into thinking they can adjust the actual exposure in post when they cannot.

For example:

Say you shoot a lowish light scene using

f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 200

when in fact you could have used 1/100s safely.

You look at the image in your raw editor and it looks too dark for your liking.

So you think, no matter I'll just bump up the exposure slider by 1 stop and it now looks good.

But, your bumped up image will have more visible noise in it than if you took the original image using 1/100s, even though the image lightness of the bumped up image will be very close to what it would have been with 1/100s.

It is low exposure - amount of light that hits the sensor per unit area - that causes visible noise.

Exposure and image lightness are too totally different things and it's when people confuse them or use them interchangeably that they can get themselves into a muddle and their image quality suffers, especially in low light.

Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying and can see where there could be confusion if you tell someone to increase exposure and they don’t if you mean in camera or in post (which I think is what happened in this thread)

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Yes, I can see some people are clearly confused by or do not understand the clear difference between image lightness and exposure.

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So software wise whats the difference between brightness and exposure (the labels for software editing)

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which software would you like to discuss?

Toronto Photography said:

So software wise whats the difference between brightness and exposure (the labels for software editing)

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Beats me. I would just like to suggest that you try using a curve instead of sliders if your software allows it. If it's well implemented, you don't have to guess about this sort of thing. You can just mouse over the image and it shows you the values, and you can massage the curve however you want. It works beautifully in Gimp, but pretty poorly in some software. It might be worth a try.

Brev00 said:

You say you did not use HDR but want to know if it looks HDR. It obviously gives you the HDR heebie-jeebies. Why? What exactly do you find unappealing about this image? Saying it is HDRish is simply too vague. Be specific. Plus, you said you did not process the image using HDR but you did not describe your processing workflow. What did you do to the original file? Perhaps you could share a link to the raw. That would be ideal.

I suspect the saturation slider has been moved far to the right. To, perhaps, create an impressive pop. Either that or you shot in jpeg using a vivid picture control. Or, maybe, your camera produces unnaturally bright and vivid greens. Would be good to know what you did. Seeing the raw would help. In the meantime, I would go back to the raw, zero the sharpening and leave the saturation and vibrance alone. Post that pic. Mabye we could help you find a nice point somewhere between that and the first version. Maybe a simply processed version has more impact.

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I processed using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC. No additional sharpening was added on the original image in my first post. I just adjusted the tones. I added a slight amount of vibrance but that's it.



I have noticed that the greens coming from my camera can be hot sometimes. Even when I calibrate the sensor the greens are pretty vibrant.

This wasn't the same day but it was a similar time of day and lighting conditions.

Straight out of camera. Properly white balanced using camera standard profile.

View attachment b503b512f3f54a8b8f72f6f62ebe8ef2.jpg

Calibrated using x-rite software.

View attachment 6711f8bd10894b33afd64918f6da621b.jpg

The sun really was setting and it was much clearer than it looks in the original photo.

I took this photo 5 minutes later from almost the same spot just turned a different direction. I'm not rally sure why the greens don't look correct to most people in the original photo.

View attachment 5fa65a34870149b8b16dd90a6dd453eb.jpg

Here's a link to the original raw file.

original Raw

Brett8883 said:

I do use calibrations from my x rite color checker.

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I like it! It's pretty hard to argue with that.

ThrillaMozilla said:

Toronto Photography said:

So software wise whats the difference between brightness and exposure (the labels for software editing)

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Beats me. I would just like to suggest that you try using a curve instead of sliders if your software allows it. If it's well implemented, you don't have to guess about this sort of thing. You can just mouse over the image and it shows you the values, and you can massage the curve however you want. It works beautifully in Gimp, but pretty poorly in some software. It might be worth a try.

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Which software does it poorly? All that I have used does it well.

tbcass said:

ThrillaMozilla said:

Toronto Photography said:

So software wise whats the difference between brightness and exposure (the labels for software editing)

Click to expand...

Beats me. I would just like to suggest that you try using a curve instead of sliders if your software allows it. If it's well implemented, you don't have to guess about this sort of thing. You can just mouse over the image and it shows you the values, and you can massage the curve however you want. It works beautifully in Gimp, but pretty poorly in some software. It might be worth a try.

Click to expand...

Which software does it poorly? All that I have used does it well.

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I have one in mind that whips the curve around uncontrollably. It's not a program that most people would use. Then there's a popular one that requires you to utter some magic incantations in order to use it, and then its effect is inscrutable. About as easy to use as trying to bend spring steel to a precise shape.

It's good that yours work well.

robert1955 said:

Toronto Photography said:

David1961 said:

Brett8883 said:

David1961 said:

Brett8883 said:

So while it isn't changing the amount of light hitting the sensor it is simulating an exposure change and does a pretty damn good job of it

Click to expand...

Yes, it is simulating, not replicating exposure which can be a huge difference especially in low light scenes.

"Exposure" sliders can encourage newbies to be lazy and sloppy in their exposure setting by misleading them into thinking they can adjust the actual exposure in post when they cannot.

For example:

Say you shoot a lowish light scene using

f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 200

when in fact you could have used 1/100s safely.

You look at the image in your raw editor and it looks too dark for your liking.

So you think, no matter I'll just bump up the exposure slider by 1 stop and it now looks good.

But, your bumped up image will have more visible noise in it than if you took the original image using 1/100s, even though the image lightness of the bumped up image will be very close to what it would have been with 1/100s.

It is low exposure - amount of light that hits the sensor per unit area - that causes visible noise.

Exposure and image lightness are too totally different things and it's when people confuse them or use them interchangeably that they can get themselves into a muddle and their image quality suffers, especially in low light.

Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying and can see where there could be confusion if you tell someone to increase exposure and they don’t if you mean in camera or in post (which I think is what happened in this thread)

Click to expand...

Yes, I can see some people are clearly confused by or do not understand the clear difference between image lightness and exposure.

Click to expand...

So software wise whats the difference between brightness and exposure (the labels for software editing)

Click to expand...

which software would you like to discuss?

Click to expand...

WEll the question came to mind with Samsung "studio" software. As thats niche, I assume the labels are similar for other programs.

Unfortunately different editors use the Brightness - Exposure combo in slightly different ways.

Kelly

KCook said:

Unfortunately different editors use the Brightness - Exposure combo in slightly different ways.

Kelly

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OK pick one and show how they are different i gamble that is close enought.

Brett8883 said:

ThrillaMozilla said:

tbcass said:

Technically exposure occurs at the time the photo is taken so technically Adobe's use of exposure in that case is incorrect. A better term would be brightness control. I imagine Adobe uses the term exposure because they think less technically informed people would be less confused by the term.

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By doing that they are teaching technically uninformed people wrong. RawTherapee calls it what it is: "exposure compensation", meaning compensation for exposure.

Lots of people believe that exposure means image brightness, and by using that term Adobe is reinforcing that believe, and also teaching it to hordes of others. Then they come here and argue the point, as someone just did in this thread.

There's probably nothing we can do about Adobe, but I wish they wouldn't do that.

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I was taught in digital imaging courses at university that "brightness" is a relative qualitative metric that affects the mood of a photo, basically synonymous with the "brilliance" of a photo. I was taught that brightness sliders are effectively midtone or gamma sliders but they affect the lighter tones more than darker tones.

"Exposure" controls work the same way as exposure compensation in camera as it affects all tonal ranges equally. It may not affect the actual amount of light entering the camera but neither does ISO and yet ISO is commonly referred to as part of the "exposure triangle."

In fact in Process Versions 1 and 2 of Adobe Camera Raw there is both a "brightness" and "Exposure" slider.

Also you have to remember that the word "exposure" is a holdover from Adobe Camera Raw which was primarily meant to be for raw images. In the context of raw images exposure makes more sense. With a raw image digital gain can be applied to the raw data during processing to affect the exposure in stops in the camera native color matrix.

For instance here's 3 bracketed exposure photos with 2 stop biases. I added exactly 2 stops of "exposure" to the EV -2 and reduced the EV +2 by 2 stops in Lightroom. You can see that besides the EV +2 which clipped the highlights in the sky which couldn't be recovered they now match the EV 0 for all practical purposes.

View attachment d44c881929cb4f81829e9bbe0fd32d18.jpg
EV 0

View attachment 5d80f65e785b4994b35d6b224150988b.jpg
EV -2 brought up 2 stops

View attachment b02b41d7350f4690abb567f7fb1362af.jpg
EV +2 brought down 2 stops

So while it isn't changing the amount of light hitting the sensor it is simulating an exposure change and does a pretty damn good job of it

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Very Informative.

Brett8883 said:

Brev00 said:

You say you did not use HDR but want to know if it looks HDR. It obviously gives you the HDR heebie-jeebies. Why? What exactly do you find unappealing about this image? Saying it is HDRish is simply too vague. Be specific. Plus, you said you did not process the image using HDR but you did not describe your processing workflow. What did you do to the original file? Perhaps you could share a link to the raw. That would be ideal.

I suspect the saturation slider has been moved far to the right. To, perhaps, create an impressive pop. Either that or you shot in jpeg using a vivid picture control. Or, maybe, your camera produces unnaturally bright and vivid greens. Would be good to know what you did. Seeing the raw would help. In the meantime, I would go back to the raw, zero the sharpening and leave the saturation and vibrance alone. Post that pic. Mabye we could help you find a nice point somewhere between that and the first version. Maybe a simply processed version has more impact.

Click to expand...

I processed using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC. No additional sharpening was added on the original image in my first post. I just adjusted the tones. I added a slight amount of vibrance but that's it.

I do use calibrations from my x rite color checker.

I have noticed that the greens coming from my camera can be hot sometimes. Even when I calibrate the sensor the greens are pretty vibrant.

This wasn't the same day but it was a similar time of day and lighting conditions.

Straight out of camera. Properly white balanced using camera standard profile.

View attachment b503b512f3f54a8b8f72f6f62ebe8ef2.jpg

Calibrated using x-rite software.

View attachment 6711f8bd10894b33afd64918f6da621b.jpg

The sun really was setting and it was much clearer than it looks in the original photo.

I took this photo 5 minutes later from almost the same spot just turned a different direction. I'm not rally sure why the greens don't look correct to most people in the original photo.

View attachment 5fa65a34870149b8b16dd90a6dd453eb.jpg

Here's a link to the original raw file.

original Raw

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You may not have moved the sliders around very much, but you have altered the image a great deal. It is flat, hazy and dull before doing any editing while your final result is saturated, contrasty, and decidedly not dull. I was unable to create a similar result in my software by arranging the sliders similarly. Different software so to be expected I suppose. Anyway, +1.25 exp with +48 whites blows the sky away in both On1 and Elements. I have to go -exp to save the highlights along with -highlights. A lot I think depends on the picture control. You are using what looks like one imported into Lightroom. Your own preset, perhaps. Changing the picture controls in my software changes the image considerably. If I were going to edit this to my taste, I would do it very differently than you did. The white balance is important, too. Did you alter it? In my software, the tint is tilted magenta but less than yours is. The white balance is a little cooler. Anyway, your end result has traveled a good deal from the starting point. Perhaps this is necessary due to the scene and your camera settings. It is hard to shoot a landscape when there is a great deal of white sky in the pic. And, the whites read very bright in my software. Up to 252. ETTR may be a tough way to go one the brights take up such a great amount of space in a pic. So, a tough pic to shoot. With all the choices we have in processing these days, one could create multitudes of versions. Just get it to where you like it. If you think it is too HDRish, then maybe you should keep a closer eye on the original as you edit. See what slider adjustments are having the most impact in terms of giving you an HDRish feel. Hold back on them.

I could share a version or two of mine if you wish.



--

Brett8883 said:

I am doing a job for this client where they are putting in a golf simulator and want me to take photos at their favorite golf courses in town and hang them up on their walls in the room with the simulator.

I'm primarily an architectural photographer so I haven't really done any true landscapes in quite some time and I am a bit rusty. They wanted me to get photos of the club houses so I assume that's the reason they chose me but they also wanted some landscapes of the courses.

I really hate the HDR look. My theory on HDR is it is a great tool but if you can tell its an HDR its been done poorly. Just my opinion.

I have this photo I like for their landscape shot but I am having trouble because I feel like it may look a little too HDRish even though its a single frame.

Let me know what you think. Im not sensitive so let me have it.

View attachment dea6168324d1418cb1e5014ef9792635.jpg

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Kinda late to the game, but I'll chip in my 2 cents. I think your edit looks good and not particularly HDRish, but to my eye it does look a tad overpumped for the sort of drab day this appears to actually be. I'm all for pushing an image towards a more ideal lighting situation, but you can only go so far. Just because a golf course can appear this green doesn’t mean that any golf course photo can be made this green and still look “right”. I wasn't there, so I have no idea how this scene actually looked, you might've nailed it, but I was inclined to go with a cooler, more subdued rendering...



View attachment 5f20290988354197abbb626489ec0b94.jpg

So I just wasn't feeling like this photo was cutting it. Maybe the HDR really wasn't the problem I had with it in the first place.

I convinced the client to let me go out and retake this shot which I am thankful for because I feel much better about it now.

View attachment e953194d1f1540cead2634a5e75e8f4b.jpg

Much better sky! But the greens still have a yellow tint on my monitor.

Kelly

Adobe LR is supposedly the digital equivalent of a darkroom. The exposure is the print exposure. Not the capture/negative exposure.

At least that's the way I always understood it.