Off-Topic - advice, experiences and examples, for images that will be processed in PhotoLab

Yes possible. I didn’t spend a lot of time on the photo. I applied two quick presets and then used the HSL tool to make the yellow more red. That was my quick implementation of an idea. I think the picture allows for a lot of gimmicks. And more time to spend if you want to get it right.

Ken had a lot of negative things to say about the 20mm AF lens. Much more expensive, bigger, and Ken didn’t like the plastic mount it comes in - he explained how I could see for myself. The lens I bought is metal, not plastic, and regarding focus - with a 20mm lens how big an issue is this? I don’t expect to use the lens that much, and I prefer the smaller version. Also, $800 felt like a pretty large pile of money, while $330 that I actually paid KEH felt effortless.

For me, it’s more like “go with the flow”. I’m listening now to a different part of “me” than I used to, and when I get a thought that something was interesting - now I stop and try to understand, and if possible, to capture it. I guess it’s now more “art” than “reporting”. Whether or not I’m any good at it is irrelevant, I’m just trying to “do” what I’m thinking, even when I feel it is silly.

Well, I did take a photo of the “reality”, but it doesn’t look anything like these interpretations. I didn’t realize my version had too much “green”, but your version does look more “plausible”. My “real” version:

I need to leave for breakfast - will read and study your response in an hour or so. Hmmm… A lot of new (to me) things to learn.

Tamron 15-30 f2.8

George

I need to give credit to @Wolfgang as without his attempt at teaching me how to use masks, there is no way (that I know of) with which I could have done this. I took one photo as @Joanna suggested, to get a good sky, and I took a “regular” snapshot to remind me of what I was starting with.

I find it difficult to “see” what you can see. Maybe I’ve spent too many decades without considering colors that much. The little bit of “blue” in your sky is much more effective than the green/blue sky in my image, so I guess I need to learn how to remove a little “green” to correct the color. I think I should be able to do this with the “HSL tool” - which I need to learn more about, so I can do this more effectively. At least I’m now aware of the problem, which is a start.

Quite true - the “reality” to me was a mostly white sky with a few tints of color. I need to learn how to realize what is REALLY there, not just my impression of a blown-out white sky.

I was oblivious to the problem until you showed it so clearly. I will try to re-do my image, using the “Control Line tool” as you have done. I immediately thought of using a mask - I guess there are better ways now, as you have proved.

This image is worth its weight in gold. I need to re-think my way of doing these things. Control Line is so much more “precision” for the same effect.

That’s what I get for using a lens from the 1980’s. The size and weight, and cost, are better, but DxO doesn’t understand them. My newer (and bigger and heavier) Nikon 24-120 does have a DxO correction module, so maybe I ought to use it instead. I like small and light lenses, but I also like perfect results. I guess I just need to eat more spinach, as “Popeye” would say so many decades ago.

Sounds good - your way of doing this is apparently more effective, covering a wider area for each zone. Easy change to make from now on.

It seems to me that if I make my perspective lines accurate, the resulting image looks “wrong”. If I instead try to make the perspective “almost” perfect, but not quite, my eyes react to the results better. I know my lines have been “off” for a while, but that was on purpose. I’ll go back to doing them perfectly (as best I can) for a while, and see how that works. After seeing the perspective as very wrong, then changing it to “none”, my eyes tell me one thing - but maybe they’re just reacting to the old memory, and not. to what is really there. Or, maybe adding a tiny amount of perspective is a good idea? I’ve been doing this for weeks. Making it “perfect” is what I prefer doing…

Er, what do those numbers mean? 6497/-6 …the 6497 is presumably the new white balance for the image as a whole. I adjusted the slider until it looked good, and ended up with the 7174 (I never paid attention to the number). What and where does the “-6” fit in? Is G/M “green/magenta”? How do I adjust this?

Thanks - now I know what to try to improve the sky.

I doubt there is any way to make it “right”. Everyone has their own perception of “right”, and in this case, I now feel your perception of what is “right” is better than mine. I don’t spend much time at it, I just adjust things until they look good to me, and only then consider “what did I just do, and why?” I envy people who can see this faster and with more precision. I can just make things “better” or “worser”, with no good way to pick the perfect value. PhotoLab does give me the ability to make things even better, and I’m learning from the rest of you how to optimize my selections.

I have an issue - I must be doing something wrong, or I don’t understand how to use the software. Here’s the problem: Because I didn’t hold the camera level, I needed to adjust the horizon, in PhotoLab. Was fine, until I realized something:

780_0113 | 2022-11-22.nef (28.5 MB)

Because the shirtless guy is now walking from right to left, it gave my brain a fresh restart on thinking about this image, and realized it would be more effective had I not cut off the fellow’s feet by cropping out the grass. Leaving the grass in place improves the image.

Here’s a screen capture of what I just tried to do:

I thought this was easy - I would just use the “repair tool” to replace the wedge of “black” with grass. But I couldn’t do it. Apparently I can’t “repair” an area like this. Maybe this is because I’m trying to copy the “repair” area onto someplace that is not part of the actual image.

Plan “B” was to use my newly installed version of PhotoLab ViewPoint 4. However, when I start Viewpoint 4, and try to go to the folder where my images are, I get a message “No image file found in current directory”.

I assumed ViewPoint 4 would open up the raw files in my folder, and once opened, I could “drag” the right edge of the image downwards just enough to get rid of the black area - the image would be “twisted” to fit.

Question #1 - what might I be doing wrong, and
Question #2 - should I go to a different part of the DxO forums to even ask about this?

Had it not been for @rrblint , with Mark’s reversed image giving me a new perspective, I might never have realized all this. My “horizon tool” would have been fine, had I left enough area around the image to crop. My fault. But if I understand ViewPoint, it should be able to correct this.

Mike, I used VP4 within PL6 and your instinct is correct: you can pull that corner down with the new Reshape tool. You can’t do this in the standalone VP4 without exporting first as the standalone version only edits TIFFs or JPEGs.

Are you sure about that? From his review

The Nikon 20mm f/1.8 AF-S is a total winner. It’s optically and ergonomically near perfect

Bokeh, the character of out of focus backgrounds, not simply how far out of focus they are, is superb.

This aspherical lens has nearly no coma; that’s now a thing of the past

In-camera correction does a great job. With in-camera correction on my D810, there is no distortion

Ergonomics are perfect; just grab and go.

With the Nano coating, there are no ghosts. If you want little colored blobs in the image from the sun, use the old 20/2.8 AF-D instead

There are no lateral color fringes on the D810, which corrects any automatically

It gets right up to 5" (125mm) from the front of the lens.

It gets very close, so close that this lens will never limit your point of view when you want to get very close and blow proportion all out the window for creative effect.

While amateurs waste time worrying about lens sharpness, pros know that lens sharpness has little to do with making sharp pictures. This said, the Nikon 20mm f/1.8 AF-S is the sharpest Nikon fixed 20mm ever made.

It’s super-sharp even at f/1.8, even at 36 MP. It’s a little less contrasty in the far corners, but still super sharp. The corners are just as good as the center a stop or two down, and there’s nothing limiting sharpness on 36 MP cameras until diffraction limits performance at the smallest apertures.

Versus all 20mm lenses

At f/1.8, this is the world’s fastest serious 20mm lens with no serious competition.

Versus Nikon 20mm f/2.8 AF, AF-D and AI-s

This all-new lens is optically and ergonomically superior to the old 20/2.8 lenses. There is no comparison.

As you may have guessed, this is a flawless lens. It is so far ahead of Nikon’s old 20mm lenses that it’s not funny.

If you want a super-fast, super-sharp, super easy to use ultra-wide lens, this is the best Nikon has ever made.

Grab one of these and the 28-300mm VR and you’re prepared for anything.

I have both and he is so right. Worth every penny. Are you sure you were reading the right review?

That’s not reality. It’s a version captured by your camera. Even the unedited RAW disagrees with that “reality”…

I very much doubt, when you looked at the sky, you could only see pure white over the entire area :sunglasses:

In this particular instance, I left both selectivity sliders at 50 but be warned this is not always going to be the case and you need to learn how to play with those sliders to optimise what is masked and what isn’t.

That sounds like an eminently sensible idea. After all, why degrade your images with an inferior lens?

The only time that is recommended is when you are photographing a building that is taller than about 4 stories, when you should leave a tad of inwards lean on both sides, otherwise, the building can start to look as if it is getting wider as you go up.

In this type of shot, go for perfect verticality. It was because the left building was so close to the edge that the lean became only too apparent.

The numbers are colour temperature (which is essentially yellow blue) first and green/magenta balance second.

With the second slider…

Capture d’écran 2022-11-26 à 20.01.39

Follow the greats and aim for recreating, not just what it “felt like” to you when you planned the shot, but the feeling you want to convey to viewers of your image.

Especially with contra-jour shots like this, don’t forget that your eyes self-adjust to see into shadows but, if you make the shadow detail too bright, you tend to get the look of a badly adjusted HDR shot.

I went out with our club photo yesterday evening and caught a nice shot of the sunset at one of my favourite local beaches.

First shot SOOC…

First shot after processing…

Second shot after processing…

Notice how, with ten minutes between the two shots, I made sure the second one, with the sun more hidden behind the clouds, I processed it so that the foreground was darker, because there was less light available.

Of course, I could have done it like so many other photographers I have seen and made everything “visible” :roll_eyes: :crazy_face: :exploding_head:

… but then it stops looking like contra-jour and more like an impossible scene where the shadows of the buildings facing me are as bright as if the sun was shining on them.

That’s because ViewPoint 4 standalone is only for processing TIFF and JPEG files, not RAW.

You simply don’t need to use the standalone version, simply activate it within PhotoLab 6 and the relevant palette will appear…

Capture d’écran 2022-11-26 à 20.22.14

This screenshot shows VP3, but yours should show VP4. Just enter the licence for VP4 when prompted but the activation menu.

The photo I posted above, just aiming the camera and adjusting the exposure for center-weighted, is what I remember seeing with my eyes. That’s what I tried to say below, but you’re right, it wasn’t simply “pure white”. But I admit, what I was mostly looking at was the construction sight, and this was just a quick “test” photo, to learn more for the future.

The above is close to what I remember, but just “close”, not “accurate”.

True, but this was after adjusting the exposure. I think you need to start with THIS file to see what I started with:
780_0196 | 2022-11-24.nef (27.0 MB)
I think this is close to what I saw with my eyes - the sky was “missing”.

Maybe the same reason you likely don’t go on walks with your LF camera and gear. My 24-120 lens is big and heavy and bulky, and the smaller Nikon lens is the opposite. But you have proven your point. I wasn’t sure it mattered. Wrong. I think from now on, I’ll take the “better” lens, with a lens profile being available in PhotoLab.

Aha! I never paid attention to that second slider. Me bad.

It is now the middle of the afternoon, and my room is far too bright. I need to look at your sunset photos this evening, when my room is dark. I prefer the second photo, now, because I can see a little detail in the side of the building, and the ground. The third (better) shot looks too dark. The sun and sky also looks better in your second version. Maybe tonight I’ll see things differently.

Your last version - yikes!!! That almost hurts my eyes!

All done. I forgot I needed to do this. I guess I forgot lots of things over time.

Quick question - is this “preferences” screen set the way the rest of you use PhotoLab?

Shouldn’t I be using setting #1 for “DxO Standard” ? I must have had a reason for changing it, long ago, maybe because I was shooting with my Leica M8.2 pretending it was an M10 and I thought this would help. I suspect I need to change it back.

Speaking of which, if I do change it back to #1, and then it starts correcting for issues with my camera body, is there a way to find out which things it is correcting for?

Absolutely not. That is the “quick and dirty” preset for those who want instant “average” results.

Leave things as they are.

My take:


and its sidecar
780_0195 | 2022-11-24.nef.dop (23.7 KB)

I decided to keep the city darker for a moodier appearance. Might have lowered its saturation too, but limited this to the orange construction railing and raised the greens a little bit instead :wink:

2 Likes

This new AF lens isn’t the one he was comparing the MF lens to. This lens sounds excellent. Maybe I’ll return the one I bought, and instead get one of these, but it’s going to cost me around $500 or so if I get it. The lens I already ordered ($330) should arrive tomorrow. I’ll decide then what to do. I don’t expect to be using a 20mm lens very much, and the smaller and lighter it is, the better - but the optical quality is most important, I agree.

Simply superb. I love the reflected highlights on the building and construction site floor.

Thank you.

As a stand alone photograph, I really like this one. It may not be as “pretty” as I wanted, but it “feels” good. Of all the versions posted up above, I think yours is my favorite. What I did is flat out ugly by comparison, especially the sky.

I downloaded the .dop file - I’m anxious to figure out how you got such a pretty sky out of my original image. I see you used both a mask, and a control line. Now I need to try to understand what you did…

Regarding the reflected highlights, I ignored them. I agree with @Joanna, they really add something to the image. I scroll up to view my original, and now it looks awful, having seen what is possible.

Perhaps I’ll go back there with the better lens tomorrow, and take a similar photo, just as the sun is setting behind the building.

I also need to stand in a better position if I can find one, so the railings in the building I’m shooting from don’t block the view. In the photo, they’re not annoying, until I realize what they are from. The other lens goes down to 20mm - maybe the photo will be improved if I add a little more to the intersection.

…toggle the mask on and off and you’ll easily see, which LA relates to what I changed.
Also check the HSL tool and the tone curve, they both contributed their share.

As for perspective: I used the horizon tool to adjust the central vertical and the up/down slider of the perspective tool to eliminate the tilt of the buildings.