Had a crack at another image that was taken late on a summer’s evening. I used PL and DxO Nik (Color FX Pro). Any thoughts guys?
Colin
3 Likes
i it just me or see i some vignetting? upper left and right corners.
Difficult to say, maybe lowering the lightness of the blue sky a bit, i atracks my eye’s now.
So use a gradient filter to lower some and at the same time enhance the orange cloudstring.
cut of that small rail bit right lower corner. bring the mirror of the boot more in front.
Maybe use controlpoint to lift the white of the first boot a bit to make it more visible.
Now is it a darker section in that band of water.
something like that?
The colours are how it was so I am reluctant to change that, the same applies to the lighting - it really was quite late on a July evening. Missed the bar in bottom corner though. I am not really into interpretative photography which is why I still think LR suites me better. The controls seem more natural, less aggressive to me. Masking is also far, far superior at the moment.
This looks how it could be seen with your eyes.
Far mor balanced.
Edit: looked at it on my tablet which is pumped up to100% brigtness.
Now on my editing screen it looks blue casted oversaturated
Very good noticeable horizon section just above the land. and the white of the boot.
By default DPL is not good on sunsets.
First, We must remove the SmartLighting.
Pascal
2 Likes
The thing is that the later version was done with Luminar 2018 and took a few minutes. I am not suggesting it is perfect but it is better and importantly so much easier. Luminar has had a lot of bad press, or the devs have, and justifiably so but it they do appear to be on the right track.
Ok had some time to wasted. 
downloaded your processed tiff.
cropped 16/9
Smartlighting: box on boot and sky, blueisch glans appeared. Very visible on the glass of the window. So that’s a no go.
turning down midtones really started to show the vignetting: vignetting manual correction 28. light from sun can do this also. (circulair)
Rather difficult to change exposure characteristics because of the tiff characteristics.
every time i get blueisch purple cast over the image. (probably your filter of color fx pro)
Not worth posting my effort.
Your luminair post is also too cold/blue. When i do a color picker on the “white boot” some thing like this is happening:
One thing is for sure: 16/9 crop does bring more balance.
Can i have a attempt on the rawfile?
RAW file attached. That blue in the sky is quite typical of a Norfolk sky. I just find it all ao difficult in PL - I am not finding it at all intuitive. There is no real flow to it imo.DSC_0326.NEF (15.7 MB)
I’m still playing, Peter. Seem to have got a fair balance using the white picker on the middle boat.
Something like this !?
Not knowing what you mean, I keep the original light.
DxO Standard preset and then Neutral colors preset.
WB original
Expo compensation -0.8 for a sunset effect
Vibrance +70 for the same thing
I don’t understand the vignettage on your TIFF.
DPL found the lens profil !
Don’t even bother with too much effects
Enjoy
Pascal
2 Likes
i though i look this up in web.
me neighter.
The point of how your mind is memorising a scene view is done by “spotbeam.” bit by bit part by part.
your eye’s adjust every time you change your lookingpoint , in “aperture” iris and memorised color. you know the boot is white so you see white. even when there is a colorcast over it.
Same why we didn’t see those dark foilage that shadowed, i think you saw more detail.
So when you want to recreate that you need some smartlighting or plane shadowlifting and highlight correction.
A camera uses WB settings to correct lightcolorcasting by time of day and luminance source, come to mind , uses a camera time to know the sunlight color? So if i set time in camera 8 hours early it has a other WB then when it’s on time? ( Sorry side trac)
Did you tried some WB presets? To see which one is close to “reality”? The colorpicker does the same, it targets neutral grey. ( don’t remeber which presentage), so you point to " this is white-ish." and the WB is adjusting towards that neutral grey . works great for colorcasting but it can ruin the sunset colors. ( because you want that type of colorcasting.)
It is rather difficult to balance color in feel (your memory) and reality and camera’s preset of wb.
I tried to edit WB but it does not bring anything … for this image. It’s not always the case !
Pascal
I took SP7pro’s absolute Auto WB, and did a 100% dodgenburn just to see if this would be near “reality”
color temp around 6319, colordeflection 3
camera setting got 4558 and 5.
big difference.
So i took over the wb numbers and did 50% sl on boot and foilage.:
One thing is for sure SL is far more effective.
I think DXO’s would be the base from where i would modify sky and sunset colors with controlpoints. fiddle a bit with exposure.
One thing: Why doesn’t DxO has this kind of “auto colorcast removal WB”
I find this Auto Absolute and Auto Natural WB modes very handy to overcome simple colorcast trouble’s and bring me to a neutralbase.
coming back to Time and Date WB calculation: bringing in the suncalender with time of sundown and horizon would give the camera a sense of colorcasting by atmosfeer due highed of sun against the horizon. (probably too much other influences to use.)
Peter
That is how I see it. The vignette is due to me having run the image through an effect in Nik. What I keep overlooking is the fact that in PL I can add a preset over the top of the initial preset. For some reason I have it fixed in my mind that adding the preset would replace the first one!
Thanks for the help. It is appreciated and useful.
Peter, great stuff. What is SB7 Pro?
The problem with this image is that it was quite late in the evening when taken so the shadows were heavy and the sky dark. Trying to stick with that means the blue cast remains. I guess the alternative is to lighten it and make it appear earlier in the evening … but that is interpretive. Nothing wrong with that of course but this image is a record of an actual event, we were there on our boat, so I lean towards a factual image (as far as possible).
Silkypix 7pro.
The two absolute auto Wb’s are great for neutralize colorcast. I really miss those settings in DPL
No i use them to get the numbers for manual adjustment in DPL.
Yes i understand your goal. I would go with those WB numbers and lower the SL presentage to get more darker image. And then enhance the sunglow ,orange, and balance the blue in the sky without getting blue cast over the white boot.
I shouldn’t even admit this but I’d totally missed the point with u-points
Now I’m up to speed thats really ramped things up a gear for me
Maybe I should read up more when the updates arrive!
Thanks Pascal
2 Likes
Yes but are they really any different to colour range masking in Adobe and which is best (still like u-point though). My big moment was being educated re smart lighting and the spot weighting tool 
True - but, only if the overlay is a partial preset … otherwise, the subsequent preset will totally replace the previous one(s).
John M