vibrant colour too much

[Ysarex86 80]

The red rose is to bright you can't see the detail. it happens mostly to my photos when the subject closeup is red.

Your red rose problem -- I can help. You have your edit tag set to NOT OK -- change that and I'll show you what's going on using your photo.

Sparky's note about the on-camera flash is important and it is a contributor but it's not the root of the problem. The red channel in your rose photo is blown to h*ll and the detail in the flower is destroyed in that process.

Here's an example of the same with one of my photos.

Joe

View attachment 103255

I have set the photo to allow edit the change in your photo is amazing.

First here's the problem with the rose photo:

I inset a histogram that shows what's happening. At the far right corner of the graph you reach the point of full saturation which is also the point of full loss of detail. The red channel in your rose photo is basically smeared all over the right side wall so that explains what your seeing and by the way good for you to have seen that and recognized it's a problem. Do a Google search for red rose images and you'll quickly find a few 100 thousand additional examples.

It's unfortunately a difficult problem. Once the damage is done it is either very hard and/or impossible to repair. Note in the histogram above that it's only the red channel that's shoved against the right wall. That means there is still detail in the flower petals in the other two channels. I was able to use that other-two-channels detail to do some red reconstruction but it's not the right way to do this. Breaking something first so you can fix it later is a bad idea.

Given the circumstance -- the best I could do.

So how did it happen and what can be done about it in the future is the question.

**As noted on-camera flash is a contributor and it exacerbates the problem. The photo I posted however had no flash applied and I still got the problem. Turn the on-camera flash off and leave it off.

**Your camera did it. The software in your camera is the culprit and when it created the JPEG file from the raw data it nuked the red channel. Your camera is not broken it just can't handle this. My camera did it too as you can see and they all pretty much do this which is why this is a tough problem. When you camera takes a photo the first thing that happens is the camera sensor records the data in a form that we call a raw file (go do some research). That raw file data is then processed into the finished JPEG photo by software in the camera. Go back and look at my photo. My camera made a real mess of it. The second version isn't, like yours, an attempt to fix the camera screw-up. What I did was have my camera save the raw data file and I processed that myself. Since I was able to do it (which means the data was recorded) I get to blame the camera software for not being able to do it.

**Two approaches: 1. You can learn to do what I did and save the raw data file and learn to process it yourself. Think really big learning curve, but hey why not learn to do it right! 2. We can help the camera software do better but in this case it isn't going to approach what you can do if you learn to do it yourself.

**How to help the camera software: In all fairness to my camera I did nothing to help it out with the photo I posted and so it really screwed up. Note in the camera version (left) how the photo has a blue/magenta color cast. That's the camera white balance taking a dive. The first thing we can do to help the camera in this case is set a custom white balance. Because you used flash your WB was good and in fact if you compare my camera did worse than yours. Your camera has picture controls for contrast and color -- got to use them in this case if you want the camera to do better. Lower contrast and color saturation in the camera controls. The next step is exposure. The camera is still going to botch these frequently if you allow the camera to take its metered exposure. Use the exposure comp. adjustment to reduce exposure some.

Joe

 

[soufiej]

Hello I am new to this forum have been taking digital photos for some time but don't really understand the technical side. I have trouble photographing closeup pics of e.g. flowers with bright / strong colours. Is there an easy explanation or does it takes years to understand this?
i have attached 2 photos one with the glare and one without.View attachment 103241View attachment 103242
Any help would be appreciated towards my learning.

As the color histogram shows, you are blowing out the reds. Therefore, you always want to check that feature of your camera before taking a shot of highly saturated colors. This should be available in your camera's menus. Have you sat down with your camera and the owner's manual to really, really learn how to control the camera? That's a first step toward better photos.

You might want to buy a basic cheat sheet for your camera. It will show you the basic operations and situations you'll encounter with your camera. It is a quick guide to how to control the camera's settings when you don't have the owner's manual with you or don't want to go searching through all the other stuff to get to a specific setting.

If you are shooting in Jpeg, your camera should have adjustable saturation levels. Typically, these will be in your WB menu and can be set up as "custom" colors. Adjustments normally also include hue, contrast and brightness. Set up a custom color setting which has the red saturation levels taken down a bit.

Then reduce your flash compensation for such photos to provide less intensity from a very harsh light source. Or buy an external flash. Or simply use a diffuser on your on-camera flash. Try "diy flash diffuser for DSLR's" in a search engine.

All of these will help and you'll eventually arrive at the point where you'll intuitively know which is the most effective for any shot. And, we all do take bad photos no matter how experienced we get. Keep shooting and keep learnin'.

 

[peetrie]

Red and Yellow are the most horrible of colours.

Which is me saying that its very easy to blow them out - ergo to over-expose them.

I would advise that when you are taking photos and reviewing them on the back of the camera use the "histogram" display. This shows a chart which displays the exposure data for the shot which, at its most simple, shows bright parts on the right and dark on the left. In an ideal world you want as much of the "bulk" of the chart on the right side of the graph, which means that much of the shot is well exposed and thus you have good light data (you can always tone back the degree of brightness in editing).

However if the bar actually makes it all the way to touching the right hand side it means that you have over-exposure; which is often also shown by the camera making overexposed areas of the photo "blink" during review like this. If its a tiny catchlight in an eye or the centre of a light bulb its not to worry; but if its a huge area then you know something is wrong.

Sometimes, esp if the photo has a lot of dark areas, you might get a larger amount on the left side of the histogram; where again if it touches the line at the very end it means full underexposure; ergo black and no detail.



However the histogram can go one step further. The default is luminescence which is basically all the light data; however if you set it to RGB mode in the histogram review then you see 3 little histograms. One for the red channel, one for greens and one for blue. This lets you then see if you've blown out one of the 3 primary colour channels in the exposure. It is very possible that you can over-expose a colour channel whilst the luminescence view shows no over-exposure at all. For something like a red or yellow flower this is very easily done and can sometimes be very hard to avoid.

Over exposure in colour channels still results in a reduction/loss of detail data in those affected areas; although sometimes you won't be able to avoid it - but given the chance experiment and see what works for you - knowing how to review on the histogram will give you a lot of post-shot information in the field where you've a chance to take another shot and correct the problem.

Thank you that has given me some homework and understanding of what is happening
.

 

[peetrie]

The red rose is to bright you can't see the detail. it happens mostly to my photos when the subject closeup is red.

Your red rose problem -- I can help. You have your edit tag set to NOT OK -- change that and I'll show you what's going on using your photo.

Sparky's note about the on-camera flash is important and it is a contributor but it's not the root of the problem. The red channel in your rose photo is blown to h*ll and the detail in the flower is destroyed in that process.

Here's an example of the same with one of my photos.

Joe

View attachment 103255

I have set the photo to allow edit the change in your photo is amazing.

First here's the problem with the rose photo:

View attachment 103257

I inset a histogram that shows what's happening. At the far right corner of the graph you reach the point of full saturation which is also the point of full loss of detail. The red channel in your rose photo is basically smeared all over the right side wall so that explains what your seeing and by the way good for you to have seen that and recognized it's a problem. Do a Google search for red rose images and you'll quickly find a few 100 thousand additional examples.

It's unfortunately a difficult problem. Once the damage is done it is either very hard and/or impossible to repair. Note in the histogram above that it's only the red channel that's shoved against the right wall. That means there is still detail in the flower petals in the other two channels. I was able to use that other-two-channels detail to do some red reconstruction but it's not the right way to do this. Breaking something first so you can fix it later is a bad idea.

View attachment 103261

Given the circumstance -- the best I could do.

So how did it happen and what can be done about it in the future is the question.

**As noted on-camera flash is a contributor and it exacerbates the problem. The photo I posted however had no flash applied and I still got the problem. Turn the on-camera flash off and leave it off.

**Your camera did it. The software in your camera is the culprit and when it created the JPEG file from the raw data it nuked the red channel. Your camera is not broken it just can't handle this. My camera did it too as you can see and they all pretty much do this which is why this is a tough problem. When you camera takes a photo the first thing that happens is the camera sensor records the data in a form that we call a raw file (go do some research). That raw file data is then processed into the finished JPEG photo by software in the camera. Go back and look at my photo. My camera made a real mess of it. The second version isn't, like yours, an attempt to fix the camera screw-up. What I did was have my camera save the raw data file and I processed that myself. Since I was able to do it (which means the data was recorded) I get to blame the camera software for not being able to do it.

**Two approaches: 1. You can learn to do what I did and save the raw data file and learn to process it yourself. Think really big learning curve, but hey why not learn to do it right! 2. We can help the camera software do better but in this case it isn't going to approach what you can do if you learn to do it yourself.

**How to help the camera software: In all fairness to my camera I did nothing to help it out with the photo I posted and so it really screwed up. Note in the camera version (left) how the photo has a blue/magenta color cast. That's the camera white balance taking a dive. The first thing we can do to help the camera in this case is set a custom white balance. Because you used flash your WB was good and in fact if you compare my camera did worse than yours. Your camera has picture controls for contrast and color -- got to use them in this case if you want the camera to do better. Lower contrast and color saturation in the camera controls. The next step is exposure. The camera is still going to botch these frequently if you allow the camera to take its metered exposure. Use the exposure comp. adjustment to reduce exposure some.

Joe

Thank you Joe for explaining I want to learn I will research what you suggest and keep going with my knowledge.

 

[peetrie]

Hello I am new to this forum have been taking digital photos for some time but don't really understand the technical side. I have trouble photographing closeup pics of e.g. flowers with bright / strong colours. Is there an easy explanation or does it takes years to understand this?
i have attached 2 photos one with the glare and one without.View attachment 103241View attachment 103242
Any help would be appreciated towards my learning.

As the color histogram shows, you are blowing out the reds. Therefore, you always want to check that feature of your camera before taking a shot of highly saturated colors. This should be available in your camera's menus. Have you sat down with your camera and the owner's manual to really, really learn how to control the camera? That's a first step toward better photos.

You might want to buy a basic cheat sheet for your camera. It will show you the basic operations and situations you'll encounter with your camera. It is a quick guide to how to control the camera's settings when you don't have the owner's manual with you or don't want to go searching through all the other stuff to get to a specific setting.

If you are shooting in Jpeg, your camera should have adjustable saturation levels. Typically, these will be in your WB menu and can be set up as "custom" colors. Adjustments normally also include hue, contrast and brightness. Set up a custom color setting which has the red saturation levels taken down a bit.

Then reduce your flash compensation for such photos to provide less intensity from a very harsh light source. Or buy an external flash. Or simply use a diffuser on your on-camera flash. Try "diy flash diffuser for DSLR's" in a search engine.

All of these will help and you'll eventually arrive at the point where you'll intuitively know which is the most effective for any shot. And, we all do take bad photos no matter how experienced we get. Keep shooting and keep learnin'.

Thank you I have lots of homework and I am keen to learn and improve.

 

[Designer]

Thank you I have lots of homework and I am keen to learn and improve.

This website will keep you busy for a while:

Learn Photography Concepts

Go to the "tutorials" section and just start in. Don't think you have to do it all in one sitting. Take your time, and study everything. If you have a specific question, then ask your question.

 

[peetrie]

Thank you I have lots of homework and I am keen to learn and improve.

This website will keep you busy for a while:

Learn Photography Concepts

Go to the "tutorials" section and just start in. Don't think you have to do it all in one sitting. Take your time, and study everything. If you have a specific question, then ask your question.

Yes thanks it will keep me very busy learning, I didn't know the learn 'photograph concepts' was there glad you gave me the link. as i get use to this site i will find lots of information in the webpage no doubt.

 

[Designer]

Your example shots have illustrated two distinct aspects of light.

If the colors are washed out and very little contrast exists in your photograph, then it's simply too much light, as in; the light is too bright. The correction for that is to modify (diffuse or diminish) the light so it's not so bright.

Also the color of the light will affect the colors of the subject.

If the subject lacks definition (texture, etc.) and looks flat, that means the light is straight on, as in too close to the camera lens. The correction is to move the light (flash)away from the central axis of the lens, thereby showing some shadows and textural detail in your subject.

 

[Derrel]

This simple,short article might be of some use to you, OP.

Lightroom Tutorial How to Repair Blown Out Colors

 

[Ysarex86 80]

This simple,short article might be of some use to you, OP.

Lightroom Tutorial How to Repair Blown Out Colors

Suggesting that you can do something about blown out colors using LR's HSL panel is OK but otherwise that blog author is completely wrong with her numbers and understanding.

Quote: "Next, hover your cursor over the area that you suspect to be blown out. Here is the reading I got from measuring just below the brightest shoulder in the image above: Red is 254 – any time a number measures higher than 240, it’s blown out. Green, on the other hand, is 0. The opposite of Green is Magenta – they have an inverse relationship. 255 is the highest number on this scale, so if Green measures 0, Magenta must be 255."

That's just as wrong as trying to claim that 2 + 2 = 5.5

Joe

 

[Derrel]

Well the article has some good information for beginners who are using Lightroom, and will probably have more actually useful working methods than chest-thumping demonstrations of editing prowess using other software apps...

As I said, it might be of some use to the OP. I wasn't vouching for every single word the author of the web article wrote. Take the good, ignore the bad. Learn the controls of the software in use, see what the sliders do. This is "the beginner's forum". My experience and intuition tells me that an on-line article showing what sliders and what their options are is going to be more useful than a histogram pulled out of context and slapped up. My post was made in an effort to hopefully to provide an answer that would be appropriate to the experience level of the questioner, rather than doing something else. I have a suspicion that the article I referred to will be of more use than many other, more-advanced and esoteric articles or posts that assume a huge base of knowledge. That's the problem with "experts" much of the time....assuming a huge base of knowledge on the part of the person asking a simple, beginner-level question.

As to the author of the on-line post I linked to: Why not use your wealth of knowledge to make a correction and send it to the author of the article? Or heck, here's a crazy idea: why don't you write the correction up HERE, and post it HERE? Explain it all to us, the right way.