Bridge over...uh...untroubled waters :)

[Neiby]

This is my second post here. I thought I'd get one more in before I head out for the night. As with the Man and Dog picture, this was taken with a Canon S95 compact. I added a touch of HDR and other post-processing. After looking at it again today, I'd be tempted to be a little more exuberant with my cropping. What else could I do to improve this sort of shot?

 

[Noonz]

In regards to composition, i rather like the shot. However, the tricky thing about shooting on a sunny day is getting perfect exposure throughout your whole image.
The clouds are almost blown out. If you were shooting in RAW this is something that can quite possibly be fixed with the recovery tool. I like the mood, the colours and the tone of the overall image.. for a compact camera i say well done and keep it up!

 

[Neiby]

Thanks! I did shoot this in RAW, so I'll see what I can do about the exposure. I'm also a total noob at HDR processing and I think I can tweak those settings so that the clouds aren't affected quite as much first, then try taming things a bit in Lightroom. I'll see what I can do. Thanks again!

 

[Neiby]

Okay, here is an updated version. I cranked up the recovery, tweaked some blacks a tiny bit, backed off on the saturation in the sky (blue was too dark, I think), and I back off on some highlights. I think this is a bit better. Thanks!

EDIT: The changes seemed a lot more significant in Lightroom! lol They seem far more subtle after uploading them here, but they are noticeable, I suppose.

 

[clanthar]

EDIT: The changes seemed a lot more significant in Lightroom! lol They seem far more subtle after uploading them here, but they are noticeable, I suppose.

I can help with this problem -- it is a bit complicated and has to do with RGB color spaces. It's a technical issue that often bites even professional photographers unfortunately.

First: You hosted your photo with Imgur. Imgur alters your photos when you upload them. Basically it trashes them by stripping out the photo's ICC profile. There are other alternative hosting sites that don't do this (Photobucket, ImageShack, Flickr, etc.) so stay away from Imgur and use a different host site that won't garbage your photos.

Second: LightRoom is also guilty and so your problem is basically compounded between two software products that are both doing bad things. LightRoom enforces a working color space and won't allow the user to alter that. It does do proper conversions upon output to finished RGB files. However since LightRoom's working color space (Pro-Photo RGB) is larger than the common output target color spaces (eg. sRGB), it's common for the output files to change appearance from the screen image you see in LightRoom. Interestingly, Adobe of course knows about this and has created a plugin for LightRoom to address the problem, but they have chosen not to incorporate this feature directly into LightRoom : Adobe - Adobe Exchange Search

OK, so what to do: When you export JPEG files from LightRoom make sure LightRoom is converting those files to the sRGB color space. Then look at your JPEG file in your web browser and compare it with the LightRoom screen image. If the difference is major you can cuss Adobe and consider learning to use that plugin above. Next: no more Imgur.

Take Care,
Joe

 

[Neiby]

That's awesome information. Thanks! I used imgur last night because it was quick and easy, but I think I'll try one of the other services for more permanent storage. I have a lot of photos in Google/Picasa. Those seem to fair a little better. What do you think of that service? Is that okay or should I open a Flickr account? I might open a Flickr account anyway. I can save Picasa for all of my personal picture albums and then use Flickr for the final images that I think are worth sharing on a wider basis.

 

[clanthar]

That's awesome information. Thanks! I used imgur last night because it was quick and easy, but I think I'll try one of the other services for more permanent storage. I have a lot of photos in Google/Picasa. Those seem to fair a little better. What do you think of that service? Is that okay or should I open a Flickr account? I might open a Flickr account anyway. I can save Picasa for all of my personal picture albums and then use Flickr for the final images that I think are worth sharing on a wider basis.

I'm afraid Picasa does the same thing; it strips ICC profiles from your photos. Let's see if I can explain: Computers only understand numbers. So a color has to be a number. In photo we arrive at all of our colors by mixing Red Green and Blue -- RGB. So a digital color is going to be a number like this: R = 130 G = 45 B = 60. Unfortunately that' s not enough. Digital color photos are used by different groups for different purposes (photographers, printers, web designers, etc.). And so when the time came to decide just exactly what color those numbers above represent those different groups had different answers. A one-size-fits-all answer wasn't going to work and so those numbers above remain undefined. To make it all work we've developed color spaces (maps) that have to be referenced in order to decode those numbers to specific colors. In different color spaces the same numbers are different colors. In other words when we apply the maps the same directions take us to different places. Here's an example:

With two different maps (sRGB and Adobe RGB) the same numbers mean different colors. Every digital photo then contains an embedded ICC profile that contains the map which allows the numbers to be decoded correctly. Software has to read the map. Good software does. If you discard the map or don't read it then the RGB numbers don't define any specific color. It amounts to breaking a link in the chain. Here's what happens:

I took this photo and uploaded it to Imgur. Imgur stripped out the ICC profile that identified the color space. In effect it pulled the map that allows the RGB numbers to decode to specific colors. On the left is the photo displayed in Firefox directly from Imgur's site. Without the ICC profile Firefox couldn't display the colors as I had originally created them. I opened another Firefox window and displayed the exact same file directly that I had just uploaded to Imgur -- it's on the right. The ICC profile is there and Firefox is reading it correctly. I grabbed a screen shot to make this illustration.

The difference isn't extreme and so most amateur photogs either don't see it or don't care -- little impetus for change allows the condition to persist. You saw it in your photo so I figured you deserved an explanation.

LightRoom is irritating in how it functions, but it's not flat-out wrong. The overall term we use here is color management. Professional photo software implements proper color management. A lot of the cheap and free consumer and web stuff ignores it. You noticed that you had been effected and didn't know why.

Take Care,
Joe

 

[BJF]

Nice shot! Could be better to crop out 1/5 from the bottom.

 

[Neiby]

Nice shot! Could be better to crop out 1/5 from the bottom.

Thanks! I agree. I'm realizing that I've been way under-cropping my photos, so I'm starting to be a lot more aggressive about it. I cropped this one just a little bit, but I think you're right that it could use a bit more.

 

[Neiby]

That's awesome information. Thanks! I used imgur last night because it was quick and easy, but I think I'll try one of the other services for more permanent storage. I have a lot of photos in Google/Picasa. Those seem to fair a little better. What do you think of that service? Is that okay or should I open a Flickr account? I might open a Flickr account anyway. I can save Picasa for all of my personal picture albums and then use Flickr for the final images that I think are worth sharing on a wider basis.

I'm afraid Picasa does the same thing; it strips ICC profiles from your photos. Let's see if I can explain: Computers only understand numbers. So a color has to be a number. In photo we arrive at all of our colors by mixing Red Green and Blue -- RGB. So a digital color is going to be a number like this: R = 130 G = 45 B = 60. Unfortunately that' s not enough. Digital color photos are used by different groups for different purposes (photographers, printers, web designers, etc.). And so when the time came to decide just exactly what color those numbers above represent those different groups had different answers. A one-size-fits-all answer wasn't going to work and so those numbers above remain undefined. To make it all work we've developed color spaces (maps) that have to be referenced in order to decode those numbers to specific colors. In different color spaces the same numbers are different colors. In other words when we apply the maps the same directions take us to different places. Here's an example:

With two different maps (sRGB and Adobe RGB) the same numbers mean different colors. Every digital photo then contains an embedded ICC profile that contains the map which allows the numbers to be decoded correctly. Software has to read the map. Good software does. If you discard the map or don't read it then the RGB numbers don't define any specific color. It amounts to breaking a link in the chain. Here's what happens:

I took this photo and uploaded it to Imgur. Imgur stripped out the ICC profile that identified the color space. In effect it pulled the map that allows the RGB numbers to decode to specific colors. On the left is the photo displayed in Firefox directly from Imgur's site. Without the ICC profile Firefox couldn't display the colors as I had originally created them. I opened another Firefox window and displayed the exact same file directly that I had just uploaded to Imgur -- it's on the right. The ICC profile is there and Firefox is reading it correctly. I grabbed a screen shot to make this illustration.

The difference isn't extreme and so most amateur photogs either don't see it or don't care -- little impetus for change allows the condition to persist. You saw it in your photo so I figured you deserved an explanation.

LightRoom is irritating in how it functions, but it's not flat-out wrong. The overall term we use here is color management. Professional photo software implements proper color management. A lot of the cheap and free consumer and web stuff ignores it. You noticed that you had been effected and didn't know why.

Take Care,
Joe

Joe, what do you think of 500px.com? I opened up an account there and it seems to be pretty cool. Lots of people have posted some truly stunning work there, so it seems to treat the photos well. I just want to pick one place and stick with it. Flickr seems to be a good option, too.

Thanks,
John