Editing high dynamic range images in PhotoLab 5

This is often the case with restored old machines and like an old friend used to say: “They are prettier now than new.”

I liked the B&W best - and would have added some grain and even more vintage looks than @Joanna.

Vintage? Why not doing it like a copperplate print? Matching the time the machines were from.
Here’s the preset


Engraved.preset (7,3 KB)

Heheheh. Had that preset for ages. Nice on occasions but I don’t use it that much.

Some interesting ideas and nice to see that you made use of selectivity.

The only thing I always find difficult is the number of control points it seems to take to get the selection just right. But that is not your fault.

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When posting the colour version I also had considered a more ‘historical’ one,
but the “Expresso” preset, I had chosen, would have needed some ‘help’.

→ Adjusted the colour version now and also dimmed the blue tractor,
exported to Nik SEP2 and finished with Nik CEP DarkenLighten Center.

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Not bad at all :grin:

Hello Mike,

I hope this message finds you well. Apologies for not replying sooner.
Thank you for your kind words also. I’ve been lurking on this forum for a long time now, addressing my queries and learning by reading. Following your findings, advices, those of Joanna, Wolfgang and some EA (Early Access) members too. Been of great assistance thus far. I will add new photo’s soon (with CR2, sidecars and my final results). Will do so under a new topic solely related to my gear and workflow. I’m new to this forum as said before, also I am still exploring the possibilities within PL5 (Currently on 5.0.1-4658 Win11) in relation to what I can achieve with my combo (which is not that great actually, mid-range but good enough for me (Canon EOS 77D + Tamron 16-300mm). By the way, I don’t really understand the control line stuff (yet). I’ve found other means in getting the result showing earlier to you. Will explain later on (separate topic as said above). Hope your understanding. Speaking of understanding. I see you reside in Miami, FL, right?. Been there ones, what a great place! Greetings form the Netherlands, Jeroen. Talk soon.

Hello, and welcome! Suggestion, I’ve found it’s easier to add just one photo, then discuss, and maybe the next day or the day after to post another photo, showing what you’ve learned, and likely asking new question(s).

If your combo isn’t that great, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I enter something here from a 60 year old film camera, or my very latest digital camera - once the image is here, we can all sort out the better ways of processing it. You could upload three files, the original image file from your camera, the .dop file that PL5 will create to keep track of your editing, and lastly, you can “export” a jpg image of your edited image, and post that, so we all can see what you’re looking at.

Yes, I live in Miami, used to live in Michigan, and long ago in New York. I’ve made several trips to the Netherlands, to meet with the manufacturer of Serpent radio control cars. I wish I had a week of free time to wander around with my camera! If the photos you’re going to be posting are of the Netherlands, that will make it all the more interesting!

As to control line, it would be good if you tried to use it for something, then posted some text about what you were trying to achieve. I’m still very rusty at this myself. The more you say about what you wanted to achieve, and what you did, the better.

Welcome!!!

There are several tutorials you might have a look for

have fun

Hello Mike, Wolfgang,

Thank you both for advices, recommendations and tutorials. Appreciated my end.
Will have a closer look at the tutorials linked Wolfgang soon, This might need passing some initial Trial & Error phase before even posting result. However, I will do that sooner or later.

First things first:
My gear : EOS 77D + Tamron multi 16-300 mm
My goal : Getting the most out of this combination with the use of PL5
PL Version : 5.01.4658 Elite
Workflow : Currently PL5 | Exoprting 16-bit TIFF | SNS-HDR | JPEGMini (latter for reducing file size without losing quality)
Other app : As depicted below

image

Not using C1 and ON1 Photo RAW for a weeks now, Been focusing on PL5 as my default starting point. This MAINLY because of the Deepprime feature AND the, to my knowledge, best lens correction features. My EOS77D + Tamrom 16-300mm have the lens modules, which is- and works very good I must say.

I’m rather ’ green’ when it comes to photography, but not lazy in getting to know more in order to enhance my results.

What I want to achieve is generally following:

  • For starters; Although HDR looks nice sometimes (and my workflow might suggest accordingly) not the 'usual HDR Feel & Look. Most of the time this gives ‘fatty’ images, detail disappears and even worse, HALO’s are often introduced. But…
  • Secondly; I do use SNS-HDR which (in contrary to what it might suggest), provides in overall enhancement w/o the mentioned side effects (at least I think).

To make a possible long story somewhat shorter for this first time.

  • I recently enhanced the infield photo of the mechanical plow, which - to my surprise - most of you liked as a first result. No, I do not have a .dop of this, I simply did not use PL5 at all for this particular enhancement on that photo.

But now I do.
See attachment, let me know your findings on this first result. Again, no correction lines/points used in PL5 as yet.

IMG_5023.CR2 (29,7 MB)
IMG_5023.CR2.dop (9,0 KB)


IMG_5023_DxO-tiff.tif (4,3 MB)

I reduced the TIFF file somewhat as 136mb was not accepted to submit. The “HDR” .jpg is my end result.

As Mike suggested, I start with a single photo. This keeps it ‘clean’ for now and will be my starting point onwards in order to improve myself.

Shoot, flame, I not afraid for criticism, as long as this is fair, constructive and helps me getting better.

Thanks in advance. Jeroen, the Netherlands

First, let me say your image is perfectly exposed, with no blocking of shadows or blowing of highlights.

You certainly don’t need HDR, there is plenty of DR in the sensor with 13 stops at 100 ISO and 10 stops at 800 ISO. So lowering your iso as much as possible will help with DR.

All I di with your image was to use Spot measure Smart Lighting with a couple of zones over the darkest and lightest areas…

… a bit of tone curve, selective tonality, fine contrast…

… and, of course, DeepPRIME to give this export…

Here is the DOP file with your version as master and mine as a virtual copy…

IMG_5023.CR2.dop (24,1 Ko)

That I sort of disagree with - if you’re working on an image, and you’re close, but you can’t quite figure out what to do next, rather than go to sleep and come back the next day, post what you’ve done. If I waited until I posted something “perfect” it might take days or maybe weeks, and as I’ve quickly learned here, it still wouldn’t be perfect. If the third step you made could be improved, but you’ve moved on to the thirteenth step, you might find (as I did) that when that early step was improved, everything that followed was different.

I sort of thought my image of the jetski was “finished”, but I found from Joanna’s reply that I made a serious error early on, and everything I did afterwards needs to be changed, and by me, not Joanna. She has already shown the way, but to learn it, really learn it, I think I need to do it on my own, from the beginning, which means creating a virtual copy and starting over.

Looking at the before/after, that change brought out more of the tree trunks, and the spheres. It also lightened the ground ear the front, but I like that dark, the way it was originally. Darker, it made a nice “base” to support the photo. Maybe starting with what the photo looks like now, a Control Line could darken the dirt closest to the camera, without darkening the trees?

Another thought is that often with a photo like this, it bothers me that the doorway in the background is not centered, but in this case it is far enough off-center that it doesn’t bother me - and the top of the doorway fits nicely into the branches. It also allows for the round window (?) to show up, balancing the door. Nice!

If it was me, seeing the tree at the far right “cut off”, I probably would have cropped more on the left, so that tree is “cut off” the same way, which would get rid of the partial tree trunk at the far left that bothers me.

More random thoughts, if this was taken on a tripod, maybe with the camera just a small amount lower, the remaining “sign” with the white and blue would not be obscured by the tree?

just a different interpretation (no competition) :slight_smile:

VC2 (new) – IMG_5023.CR2.dop (31,4 KB)

general colour temperature like @Joanna but otherwise much softer … and when you deactivate the Local Adjustments you get ‘another’ pic

Screen Shot 11-16-21 at 08.47 PM

Thank you Joanna, this - I must admit - is a good start knowing and thus a good base for further progress accordingly.

Mind you, my favorite setting on my Canon 77D is AV setting and F8 (Never use Auto, P or “Scene-Modes”. This AV I prefer using as set now.

You told earlier to others id I recall correctly “Know you camera inside and out and especially its limitations”. After numerous trails and errors, I finally am pleased with the initial CR2 RAW file output. Although (I must say still), the RAW output directly from the camera I still find looking sort of ‘mushy’, dull, flat, ‘where’s the detail gone’, type of result. It bothered me a long time and for long I thought this combination not working as it should (Calibrating this set?). Searched the Net till I stumbled on this; https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4426540 informing me to change particular settings, etc. That helped and was a relief. Happy man now.

The multi lens 16-300mm is not the best for getting the best results (I know and am aware of). Always a compromise and best results are derived from I’d say 50-250mm. But then again, I’m no fan of changing lenses along the way and this is flexible within the (now known) limitations. Besides, this kit is good for practicing in my opinion. A 77D seems a good mid-range basis, alike 80D. Read good reviews on it. Okay, there’s much better on the market. But, more then less, the quality of the photo is in the atmosphere and setting. All happens in the camera body to start with. One can perform some magic afterward, but the ‘feel’ must be initially in the eye of the beholder. Working on that too Mike :sweat_smile: I do agree with you too actually, but I was just indicating to not have touched anything yet in PL5 realted to correction lines, etc. So, passing a few phases is meant as 'look at the tutorials and simply start with some basic examples. I too learnt that no photo is 100% perfect.

Well, actually I did not pay this much attention to that this time. Aim was ‘shoot and present some experts on the DxOForum’.

New example (dull sky involved)
I done the same sequence as with 1st photo, but this time the sky won’t ‘work’ as I want it to become (I say become, might be there’s simply nothing to enhance on this day with moisture and grey skies?) Do I perhaps want too recover too much? This I could not improve with my current workflow. Any of you have some advice, recommendation (from within PL5)?

IMG_5019.CR2 (28,7 MB)
IMG_5019.CR2.dop (8,8 KB)


IMG_5019_DxO-tiff.tif (4,2 MB)

Jeroen.

There are two very un-ethical words that I think of as I view this image - “sky” “replacement”. I think that breaks every rule I’ve ever considered as something NEVER to do, except for infrared type photos.

I assume selecting the sky, and then making it light blue would be equally wrong? I find the sky annoying, and maybe some cropping at the left would cut down on the amount of hanging leaves and branches - to me, they are very annoying, and detract from the building. Actually, I would crop both on the left, and on the right. When I hold my hands in front of my face to do that, the photo looks more powerful.

here is your pic → IMG_5019.CR2.dop (18,9 KB) (check the single control point …)

It’s missing the light to sculpture the buildings and colourwise there is not much you can do on a cold and foggy day. While your enhancement with HDR technique brings back some colour, it doesn’t help to differentiate. – I suggest to try a picture with fog and maybe in B&W.


BTW, to quicker find out about corrections made to a pic
Screen Shot 11-16-21 at 10.15 PM

Let me tell you about smartlighting’s behaviour in the average weighted modes and box modes.
1 what it mainly does is flattening contrast and exposure differences. By compressing difference between black and white of the image at a way it fits in a Photograpic DR of the Jpeg,( say 0-255)
2 shifting the slider to the right the contrast bleeds out more by further %. You flatten the image in tonality. So don’t push it above 40 unless you really need this.
3 by using the facedetection modes, box modes, you get more control over which parts YOU find important. Draw a box over a brightest point smartlighting draws this point in side de jpegs “DR” same in dark black or darker spots a box lifts this to a more open shadow. To show details. This pull back and push up does a bleedout of contrast. Aka you image gets dull.
This is not a problem, because and now the nice part of smartlighting:
It’s behaves a bit like a tonecurve.
Every box is a pin on the image it’s tonal line. So by marking the highlight spot with a box you pin this place to say 255. And when you lift global exposure compensation it tries to keep this boxed area on it’s 255. So by lifting exposure you lift the hole image a bit wile smartlighting trying to keep the luminance level in the boxed area the same.
Just try it. Use the same box @Joanna used on the door. But not the one on the tree
Keep it on 25% you wil see the highkey section dropping down and shadows are the same or slidgly darker. Then gently push exposure compensation up (max 2 stops because further isn’t usefull because of noiselevels) wile watching the box area.
You wil see that you image is morfing around the box in tonality levels.
That’s smartlighting working. It reacts to the changing levels and recalculate the total tonality of the image in order to keep it inside the “photograpic DR”.
Some times a 1box placement is a great start. And don’t forget to move the boxes around when you not satisfied and watch the reaction of smartlighting.

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Time to post my edit of this photo. I brightened up the colors a little, made the sky just a tad darker, cropped the right and the left sides, then brightened up the bushes on the right, and the tree leaves at top left. I have no idea if this is “authentic”, but other than for the leaves blocking the left tower, I like it. I was tempted to make the grass a little greener, but stopped at that point.

IMG_5019.CR2.dop (15.1 KB)

Gotta add, I made it look as much as possible as how I would have wanted it to look had I taken the photo, which might be very different from the way others view this scene.

All it lacks is a watermark at the bottom left. :slight_smile:

I got to wondering what a sunset might look like if I used a fisheye lens, but decided against it, as everything would be like a “round bubble”. Instead I selected my 14mm Sigma.

I started taking photos at 5pm EST, when there were lots of beautiful clouds, but no “sunset” yet, and took my last photo half an hour later, maybe a few minutes after the brilliant and large orange sunset sky started to fade. Of course, with the 14mm lens, that becomes a tiny part of my image. I found the results very interesting, but the sunset became a very small part of the whole image.

Out of the 50 or so test images, this was the only one that I liked, thinking only of the sunset. Earlier images kept getting better and better, but after this one the effect was wearing away. What I especially liked was how the sun, when it had almost vanished, was still illuminating the bottoms of some of the clouds with the beautiful orange glow. (My screen is telling me that there is no clipping, but I am right on the edge.)

I’d like to say “I like it”, but lately most of the images I edit I end up liking, since PL5 allows me to continue to manipulate them until they show what I want. I could never do that with Photoshop, or Lightroom, or any of the others - with PL5 I start at the top of the right panel, and work my way down selecting tools and values, and skipping over others that don’t seem useful. Sometimes I already know which are most important, so I do those first.

Lately, there is always this “nagging” thought in my mind, of “what else would Joanna do?” Sometimes that reminds me of things she has done before, but at other times (like now) I think that anything I change in this version of the image will degrade it.

Of course, all of you are free to prove me wrong, and edit it your way, and if I’m lucky, I will come away with a new “trick/tool” for the future!!!

_MJM9746 | 2021-11-16.nef (26.0 MB)

_MJM9746 | 2021-11-16.nef.dop (13.7 KB)

(It looks MUCH better in PL5 with the dark gray color surrounding the image, than it does in this forum, surrounded on all sides by white…)

Next time, I may try this from my elevated position to watch the sun set, and use my 200mm lens on my D750.