Aoraki/Mt Cook, New Zealand

[shadowblade]

Curiously both Firefox and Chrome render identically on both my monitors....Microsoft Edge (rarley use by me) is nauseatingly vibrant on my Wide Gamut display less so on the sRGB one. My software tells me that the embedded color profile is sRGB.

Really wish software (and hardware) manufacturers would pay a little more attention to colour space, accuracy and compatibility issues. For the moment, all we have browser-wise is Firefox, and even that doesn't seem to work particularly well (on my wide-gamut monitor, the same thing in Firefox looks red and super-saturated compared with Photoshop) and requires hacking into hidden settings to make it work at all.

[Paulo Bizarro]

Good light and composition.

[Mark Lindquist]

I think it's really getting there SB.  Whatever you're doing, it's much improved.  I think the blues are still pushed a little too much.  If possible perhaps dialing it back until the blue cast in the pavement (foreground) turns black might help overall.  But it's a very contrasty light so you may not be able to and keep the water as you have it.  The mountains have a bit too much blue cast now.

But overall it's a powerful and dramatic presence.  This is not an easy piece to edit, for sure.

Mark

[Arlen]

I think it's really getting there SB.  Whatever you're doing, it's much improved.
But overall it's a powerful and dramatic presence.  This is not an easy piece to edit, for sure.
Mark

Agreed.

SB, your latest modification of the image within the original post, dated April 26, 10:58:44 pm, now has an embedded sRGB profile. So whatever you did, you have fixed that issue. And it now looks the same in both Firefox and Chrome.

Curiously both Firefox and Chrome render identically on both my monitors....Microsoft Edge (rarley use by me) is nauseatingly vibrant on my Wide Gamut display less so on the sRGB one. My software tells me that the embedded color profile is sRGB.

Mahn, the images in both Microsoft Edge and MS Internet Explorer continue to look "nauseatingly vibrant" on my wide gamut monitor, too. So those two browsers are apparently not color managed at all. As noted above, your software tells you that the image in the original post has an embedded sRGB profile because after SB's latest modification, it now does.

[shadowblade]

I think it's really getting there SB.  Whatever you're doing, it's much improved.  I think the blues are still pushed a little too much.  If possible perhaps dialing it back until the blue cast in the pavement (foreground) turns black might help overall.  But it's a very contrasty light so you may not be able to and keep the water as you have it.  The mountains have a bit too much blue cast now.

But overall it's a powerful and dramatic presence.  This is not an easy piece to edit, for sure.

Mark

I've already had to dial back the turquoise, since, straight out of camera, it almost blew out Adobe RGB, let alone sRGB.

Just corrected the slight green colour cast and saved it again, using a different conversion setting. How does it look now? Aside from the slight colour correction and cloning out dust, etc., I haven't actually done anything to the ProPhoto RGB file since I first posted this image - the only thing I've changed is conversion settings to change it to sRGB. So the problem seems to be entirely in the conversion settings, not the original edit...

Agreed.

SB, your latest modification of the image within the original post, dated April 26, 10:58:44 pm, now has an embedded sRGB profile. So whatever you did, you have fixed that issue. And it now looks the same in both Firefox and Chrome.

Just saved it again to fix a colour cast, clone out some dust and apply a slightly different conversion method. Does it still work properly?

Mahn, the images in both Microsoft Edge and MS Internet Explorer continue to look "nauseatingly vibrant" on my wide gamut monitor, too. So those two browsers are apparently not color managed at all. As noted above, your software tells you that the image in the original post has an embedded sRGB profile because after SB's latest modification, it now does.

If someone's running a completely non-colour-managed browser on a wide-gamut monitor, I doubt there's much I can do to make the image look good there.

[Arlen]

If someone's running a completely non-colour-managed browser on a wide-gamut monitor, I doubt there's much I can do to make the image look good there.

That's right. You've done everything you can now to address that problem.

[Mark Lindquist]

I've already had to dial back the turquoise, since, straight out of camera, it almost blew out Adobe RGB, let alone sRGB.

Just corrected the slight green colour cast and saved it again, using a different conversion setting. How does it look now? Aside from the slight colour correction and cloning out dust, etc., I haven't actually done anything to the ProPhoto RGB file since I first posted this image - the only thing I've changed is conversion settings to change it to sRGB. So the problem seems to be entirely in the conversion settings, not the original edit...

Just saved it again to fix a colour cast, clone out some dust and apply a slightly different conversion method. Does it still work properly?

If someone's running a completely non-colour-managed browser on a wide-gamut monitor, I doubt there's much I can do to make the image look good there.

I think it's really a tough edit because of the original contrast, SB.  It seems that no matter what, one adjustment significantly affects another, like the blues in the water and mountain and the blue in the asphalt on the road.  I understand that you're attempting to get a global edit to deal with the entire image, but I don't know if it's possible, embedded profile, monitor and browser issues aside.

As we both know, an image like this is often tackled with HDR, but in this one, it would be just ugly eye candy using HDR rendering algorythms.

In tough images like this where the contrast is just "spikey" if the image is worth it to me and I really care about it, I select several parts or "components" of the image and make layers out of them and edit each individually, mostly for color, clarity, shadow/highlight and sharpness.  Once refined, I begin by editing each area by doing a 3 layer approach in new images by selecting the area just edited and making a new layer via copy, then going back to the background, select the inverse making a new layer via layer copy, then I make final adjustments and flatten the 3 layer sandwich and move on to the next major component adjustment.  I would probably have several independent layers: Sky, water, roadside right, road, roadside left, roadside left upper, and mountains.  Each layer would be individually edited for the above mentioned and would be feathered in via layer coppies.  An edit like that would probably take me 2-3 maybe four hours, but each element would be fully controlled and not influenced by any other.  In most cases, I make layer masks and or paint the adjusted layers in.

You've just about got it, but given the complexity of the interactions of the shadows and highlights and nearly clipped areas of several colors I'm just not sure you can do more other than getting into the kind of edit I discuss above.  Of course stylistic preferences play a big role as well.  If you want blocked up shadow areas such as in the edge of the evergreens, and you want blue for the color of asphalt, and you don't mind if you've lost much of the detail in the grasses on the right side of the road, then overall if it's the effect you're going for, then you have it.

I do think it's a very cool capture and like I say, editing-wise, you've got a tiger by the tail.

Mark

[shadowblade]

I think it's really a tough edit because of the original contrast, SB.  It seems that no matter what, one adjustment significantly affects another, like the blues in the water and mountain and the blue in the asphalt on the road.  I understand that you're attempting to get a global edit to deal with the entire image, but I don't know if it's possible, embedded profile, monitor and browser issues aside.

As we both know, an image like this is often tackled with HDR, but in this one, it would be just ugly eye candy using HDR rendering algorythms.

In tough images like this where the contrast is just "spikey" if the image is worth it to me and I really care about it, I select several parts or "components" of the image and make layers out of them and edit each individually, mostly for color, clarity, shadow/highlight and sharpness.  Once refined, I begin by editing each area by doing a 3 layer approach in new images by selecting the area just edited and making a new layer via copy, then going back to the background, select the inverse making a new layer via layer copy, then I make final adjustments and flatten the 3 layer sandwich and move on to the next major component adjustment.  I would probably have several independent layers: Sky, water, roadside right, road, roadside left, roadside left upper, and mountains.  Each layer would be individually edited for the above mentioned and would be feathered in via layer coppies.  An edit like that would probably take me 2-3 maybe four hours, but each element would be fully controlled and not influenced by any other.  In most cases, I make layer masks and or paint the adjusted layers in.

You've just about got it, but given the complexity of the interactions of the shadows and highlights and nearly clipped areas of several colors I'm just not sure you can do more other than getting into the kind of edit I discuss above.  Of course stylistic preferences play a big role as well.  If you want blocked up shadow areas such as in the edge of the evergreens, and you want blue for the color of asphalt, and you don't mind if you've lost much of the detail in the grasses on the right side of the road, then overall if it's the effect you're going for, then you have it.

I do think it's a very cool capture and like I say, editing-wise, you've got a tiger by the tail.

Mark

Dynamic range isn't really the issue here, although I did take three exposures, two stops apart, to ensure there wouldn't be any nasty surprises. Colour is the far bigger challenge - intense orange-yellow direct sunlight, contrasted against blue, scattered light in the shadows.

I decided to leave the road blue, because, in that kind of lighting, shadow areas are blue - blue light is scattered more than any other colour in the visible spectrum, which is why the sky is blue and why shadows are also blue. And, the warmer the direct light source (and you don't get much warmer than direct sunlight just before sunset), the bluer they look. Neutralising the blues in the shadows is not only unrealistic, but, if performed as a global colour temperature adjustment instead of a local adjustment, would turn the whole image orange.

There's plenty of room to lift the shadows a bit, via a global curves adjustment, but the last thing you'd want is the faux low-contrast appearance usually seen in badly-tonemapped images.

[luxborealis]

That's right. You've done everything you can now to address that problem.

...from a technical p.o.v. How about from a human p.o.v.? It is still over-saturated looking. Perhaps it was the day or the place or the lighting. Perhaps it's our collective notion that it has to look natural to be correct. But we must also consider another option... Why is it always the fault of the equipment or software?

[Arlen]

...from a technical p.o.v.

Yes, that's the only issue I was addressing here.

[Sean H]

There is much drama and beauty in the photo (snow-capped mountain, winding mountain road, etc) so even if somewhat over-saturated in the blue part of the spectrum, it makes the whole ensemble seem very surreal and so adds another, yet different layer of lusciousness to your shot. It is hard for me to find words to describe this shot (apart from the usual -- eg. beautiful, dramatic) because of the surreal nature of the overall piece caused by my monitor's interpretation of the range of saturated blues. And if it is still beautiful in an over-saturated way, then on your monitor (and in print) which have corrected for this, it must be stunning. Thanks for sharing!