The power of RAW processing (with images!)

[UUilliam]

So last night, I wen't out (about 2 - 3 am.) to try get some shots of the stars...

needless to say, It failed miserably!

However, Before I left, I decided to shoot towards the trees to try an effect I seen in a magazine...
which also failed!

I set timer to 10 seconds, shutter to 30 second then sprinted about 20 metres to the tree with my flash gun, fired it 3 times and sprinted back just in time to hear the shutter "click"
I thought this ought to be good! - nope, pure black!

result: -

I tried a few time with similar results.

today I decided to give it a bash in editing, I was surprised with how much detail I pulled back in from the "complete blackness"

result from ACR process :-

as you can see it is noisy, as an attempt to see just how well my noise reduction plugin worked, I tested it on the image (and added a mask to add noise back into the trees so it wasn't too blurry but used a grey so it was not too noisy in the trees.)

result :-

I ended with adding a little bit of a "pop" by duplicating the image and setting to overlay and reducing opacity.

result:-

Now, If that isn't impressive (hardly perfect however it is impressive!) I do not know what is...

that is why I support RAW

here is a comparison table:

 

[Big Mike]

That's certainly impressive...but I wonder what you could have gotten from JPEG files.

 

[UUilliam]

You can always try with my original image (that I saved as .jpg.)

just gave it a quick try using exposure in photoshop, it quickly begins to band.

 

[Steve01]

Thre you go.
Excelent job. :thumbup:

 

[UUilliam]

^ what?

 

[Steve01]

^ what?

I thought you did an excellent job on recovering your image.

 

[Andrew Sun]

as the thread title says, that is indeed the power of RAW editing
by the way, good save as well