making colors "pop"- GIMP

[unpopular]

I forgot about that feature. What exactly does it do, anyway?

 

[unpopular]

Well. Those are HDR.

That's what I thought No HDR in GIMP.

Nope, but there is Luminance HDR and Photivo which allows for some tone mapping and HDR-esque local contrast adjustment.

 

[unpopular]

Here is a tutorial on "Fake HDR" (local contrast) in Photivo, apply this to RAW files before importing into GIMP to avoid banding and noise. The end result is a little goofy, but some intermediates are good examples:

Fake HDR - photivo wiki

 

[unpopular]

What's even more interesting is looking at if from a distance, and slowly walking closer.

Anyway, enough parlor tricks. I agree that implementing these concepts has always been difficult, and without directly being able to manipulate HSL/HSV data while seeing what you're actually doing, it's even harder.

 

[unpopular]

There used to be a program called Asiva Photo that would have been very promising. I do not know if it's still available.

 

[Ysarex]

I forgot about that feature. What exactly does it do, anyway?

What it does is increase/decrease color saturation disproportionately. It leaves already saturated colors alone and raises/lowers the saturation of lower/higher saturated colors. In other words bringing all colors up/down to a more even saturation level -- an unrealistic effect if you're photographing the natural world. It's Adobe exclusive so far as I know. My gripe with it isn't that it exists, it's where Adobe put it and how it so often gets abused for that reason. In LR/ACR it's right there under basic controls and in Photoshop it shows up under Image/Adjustments. My students lean on the bleepin' thing constantly. Then I ask them, "what specifically did that do to your photo?" They're clueless. "Does it have any negative effects?" (it's a major noise generator and will eventually begin to posterize tone response). More clueless. So I yell at them, "What are you trying to do? You want to become bleepin' fauxtographers?!" I think part of the problem is in the very terminology. Vibrance isn't helping my students understand what that tool does. It's the wrong word for what the adjustment does and since it really isn't a basic adjustment it belongs over in the Filter section.

After doing scores of different things to photos in this thread Peano reminded me that this Vibrance control has been available in Photoshop/LR for years and yet what this Vibrance control actually does is one thing he never did as an example. Duh, my point.

I've got nothing against making a photo "pop." I'm just suggesting we'll have greater repeatable success if we use meaningful words with meaningful methods behind them -- otherwise we end up using horrid Gucci ads with alien colored skies as examples of "pop" and can't explain what in fact is "pop."

Joe

P.S. To avoid the (pretty major) noise build up that Vibrance produces you can achieve nearly the same effect (superior I think) by switching the photo into Lab and using Levels -- equally pull in the end sliders of the "a" and "b" channels.

Jess, heads up! If you do want to play around with decomp in GIMP try this: Decompose a photo in GIMP to the LAB model. Again you'll get a B&W of your photo -- should look washed out. Go to Windows/Dockable Dialog and select Layers. Note the two layers "A" and "B." Click on layer "A" to select it and then from the Colors menu select Levels. Pull the two end sliders in the same amount -- try 15 units for each; so 255 becomes 240 and 0 becomes 15. Do the same for the "B" layer and then recompose the photo. Once the photo is recomposed go to Colors/Levels to tweak the overall appearance -- may need to pull the midpoint slider to the right some.

You can experiment with more or less than 15 units and eventually you can experiment with altering "A" layer only or "B" layer only or use different unit values for each.

 

[Ysarex]

Well. Those are HDR.

That's what I thought No HDR in GIMP.

Nope, but there is Luminance HDR and Photivo which allows for some tone mapping and HDR-esque local contrast adjustment.

This is a fairly inexpensive purchase and offers one of the best bang/buck combinations if you want to tone-map photos. It's works better if you can feed it a Raw file and it works best if you can feed it multiple Raw files over a bracket range. However it will work with camera JPEGs.

Oloneo HDRengine

Joe

 

[unpopular]

That's what I thought No HDR in GIMP.

Nope, but there is Luminance HDR and Photivo which allows for some tone mapping and HDR-esque local contrast adjustment.

This is a fairly inexpensive purchase and offers one of the best bang/buck combinations if you want to tone-map photos.Joe

Uhm. Luminance is free. Is there some reason why people don't seem to want to accept it?

 

[jowensphoto]

Worked with the HSL technique again, with some subtle yet pleasing results. I added a couple layers in different modes to fine tune.

Original
View attachment 12524

Edited


I tried to figure out a different crop, but I couldn't include all the elements I wanted. So the original stayed.

 

[jowensphoto]

Thanks for all of the HDR suggestions. I've always wanted to try it out, but don't want to be "that guy" (well, girl in my case).

 

[unpopular]

Worked with the HSL technique again, with some subtle yet pleasing results. I added a couple layers in different modes to fine tune.

The difference is very subtle. What exactly do you have in mind for this image; what are your expectations for how it should look?

----

There is nothing wrong with HDR or even tone mapping. As you know, I'm a pretty traditional photographer, but I have been known to use it. I prefer exposure fusion (see Enfuse - PanoTools.org Wiki), but I've worked with tone mapping as well.

The hard part is getting past the technique and using it in a productive way. But there is no need to shy away from it for the sake of it's bad reputation. High Dynamic Range techniques both digital and in the darkroom, are, and always have been, useful tools.

 

[jowensphoto]

The photo I used is part of my problem. It doesnt have range really worth messing with. I was excited about it because it's my first "day at night" shot.

I'm heading to the outer banks here in a few weeks and hope to get some great sunset photos. I'd like to fine tune the technique in the mean time.


HDR is probably the route I'll take this, but I plan to stay away from overcooked and cliche.

 

[jowensphoto]

I am reading up on EF. I downloaded Hugin earlier, it was a suggested freeware program for HDR.

Looks like I have a lot to work with!!

 

[jowensphoto]

correction, I downloaded hugin for panos. I'm not sure how I'd go about EF with it... on to figure it out!


ETA: Anyone interested in Hugin should know that unless you use the assistant feature and have shot with nearly perfect parallax, it's a bit of a learning curve. However, the wiki is good: Hugin FAQ - PanoTools.org Wiki

 

[unpopular]

Using hugin to get to enfuse is like cutting butter with a chainsaw, I think EnfuseGUI is probably a better solution for simply compiling EF.