Bringin' out the Sunshine

amendegw wrote on 3/19/2012, 1:14 PM

Okay, everyone, let's take a break from discussing Vegas crashes. Yesterday, I took a short trip down to Washington, DC to visit the Cherry Blossom Festival. Unfortunately, the day was very gray & dreary (even drizzled a bit). The Cherry Blossoms were beautiful - unfortunately the lack of sunshine made the videos almost like shooting in grayscale.

Here's a screengrab of a shot that (I thought) was nicely framed, but really needed some sunshine:

I attempted to make it better by adding a three FX chain.

1) Color Corrector to reduce gamma & increase gain.
2) Color Corrector Secondary to add blue to the sky.
3) Color Corrector Secondary to add blue to the water.

Here 'tis:

Well, to my eyes, it's better, but not great. I'm just wondering how others would approach this dilemma? (Yeah, I know, the top answer will be, "Only shoot in good lighting" [grin]). What I'm really interested in in is others techniques for salvaging these images in post.

...Jerry

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amendegw wrote on 3/21/2012, 5:57 AM

johnmeyer said, "In this case I used a much more aggressive color curve, because I sensed that people here really wanted to "punch up" the video."John, your color curves always seem to have interesting shapes, but they always seem to do the job nicely. What is your technique?

...Jerry

johnmeyer wrote on 3/21/2012, 12:05 PM

What is your technique?When it comes to taste and aesthetics, I am the last person in the world you want to ask. However, since you did ask, here's what I do.

First, I open the videoscopes and set it to waveform. I don't use this to actually set anything but instead glance at it occasionally as a safety check because it is all too easy, especially when trying to improve "muddy" video, to blow out some highlights. So, make sure nothing goes above 100 or below 0.

Next, I add a point about 20% up from the bottom. In this particular case, I collapsed the handle that controls what happens in the bottom 20%. This ensured that I didn't do anything to crush or expand the darkest part of the shadows. No matter what I do with my second point, the bottom 20% will remain unaltered.

I then put a point about 3/4 of the way up the curve and start moving it all around: up, down, left and right. I sometimes move it down the curve to almost the 50% mark (dead center) and sometimes move it towards the upper right until it is almost at the top. Just click on the point, keep the mouse button pressed down, and move it.

The key thing is to move it around a LOT in order to get a feel for what happens. As you do this, let your "gut" initially be your guide: does it "feel" good when you get to a certain point? I find that I get almost a sense of relief when something starts to look better, but get quite anxious when things are moving in the wrong direction. This is what I mean by "using your gut."

Once you start getting a feel for something that looks "right," start performing some sanity checks. The first check is to look at the scopes. Often you will find that you've lost your highlights (brighter always initially looks really good, just like the TVs in department stores that have the contrast turned all the way up). If you have blown out the highlights, you'll find, as you look at the image, that sure enough, the top of the Jefferson Memorial has disappeared into the sky (this actually happened as I was making the adjustments).

Do the same check on the shadows.

Finally, do fine tuning by looking at the intermediate areas. I used the trees on the other side of the Potomac as my guide. I found that with certain settings I was able to bring out quite a bit of detail in the shadows. As part of this process, once you get the upper point close to "right," pull out the handles on the bottom point, making sure to pull them out exactly in-line with the slope of the curve at that point (so as to not change anything). Then, swing those handles back and forth while watching the shadows. Make sure not to solarize anything while you do this, but do try to get a nice balance between the detail in the shadows and pure black. While there is no rule that says every frame must have some pixel that has a zero luma value, if you do have legitimate shadow areas, you probably want to have the darkest areas somewhere near that value.

Avoid the temptation to put additional points on the curve. I have sometimes done this, but it is very hard to avoid solarizing some part of the image, and you almost always end up with something looking "wrong" or "artificial."

Once you get what you like, play the entire clip. On your cherry blossom clip, nothing changes much, but in most clips, the camera will move and things may change. Therefore, you may need to keyframe things a little. Keep an eye on the scope while doing this.

I have no idea whether this is the right way to do it, but it is based on things I read back in 1962 as a ten-year-old darkroom fanatic when my engineer dad gave me books that talked about "logarithmic curves" and tone maps and "s curves." I didn't understand a word of it back then, but it stayed in my consciousness for years, and when digital photo manipulation tools became available, and I saw things like the Color Curve, it all came back to me.

robwood wrote on 3/21/2012, 2:49 PM

"I then used two separate Secondary Color Correctors. I created a mask on the first one for the cherry blossoms and then really hit hard the saturation. Next, I created a mask for the sky and then tinted it blue." John Meyer

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yeh, nice CC there, helped warm the shot nicely... and the Curves technique was good too, thx for sharing.

johnmeyer wrote on 3/21/2012, 4:13 PM

nice CC there, helped warm the shot nicely... and the Curves technique was good too ...Actually, as I hinted in my post, I wasn't very happy with the "sky" (cloud) color and should have found a real sky and sampled that. The cherry blossoms, however, I thought came out pretty darn well: the color is exactly what my memory recalls they look like.

Now, if I really wanted to get into this, I'd take that cherry blossom mask and use it to "light" the blossom like Bob (farss) indicated he would do, if he had been there to help out. I think I could do a pretty good "fake" of what it would look like with lighting on the blossoms.