Andes from the Sky

[lbenac]

These pictures were taken from the window of a Lan Peru plane.
I processed with a CIELab  work flow to boost color and reduce fog.

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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I am very new to the Lab workflow (and to photography for that matter  ) so any comments are very welcome.

Cheers,

Luc.

[LoisWakeman]

Hi Luc: #2 is interesting because it shows the juxtaposition of a huge city with mountains, and #3 has semi-abstract qualities that are pleasing. I think the last one has perhaps the greatest potential - but the patchiness of the colour in the sea, and the overall finish, aren't quite right yet - well, that's how I see it. The rest leave me a bit cold as they don't have a lot to say to me, having never visited the places.

[lbenac]

Hi Luc: #2 is interesting because it shows the juxtaposition of a huge city with mountains, and #3 has semi-abstract qualities that are pleasing. I think the last one has perhaps the greatest potential - but the patchiness of the colour in the sea, and the overall finish, aren't quite right yet - well, that's how I see it. The rest leave me a bit cold as they don't have a lot to say to me, having never visited the places.
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Hello Lois,

Thank you for your comment.
According to various feed-back #2 came out the best of the lot for exactly the reason you pointed out.
I am still working on my Lab workflow going through the book at the same time.
This part of Peru is really an acquired taste not only for photography. It is dry, dust settle everywhere as there is no rain and the range of colors is very narrow.
As for the last one, I wish I had been on top of a hill with a tripod instead of behind the glass(es) of a plane window. that said this is not a part of the city where I would go at dusk with my camera equipment :-)

Cheers,

ps: I was looking at your web site wich outside of being very , very slow to load as some really nice pictures that are probably even better on a larger format or print.
I found that for small JPG you had a very clean not over sharpened detail. Is there any specific worflow to prepare for web that you are following and that you might share???

[LoisWakeman]

Hi Luc,

Sorry the site was slow: sometimes I need to kick the support guys to restart the web server if it's getting clogged up - perhaps this is one of them! (Seems OK here this a.m. - so might be a network glitch?)

Re: JPGs: well, I am pretty low tech here, and just use Paintshop Pro for web images. JPGs are resized as necessary, and sharpened according to the subject: normally I use USM with radius of between 0.6 and 0.7, and strength of 0.6 to 0.8 in the luminance channel only. (Not sure how that translates into Photoshop parameters?) Then I save at about 78% quality (i.e. 22% compression) as a reasonable compromise between file size and artefacting. Hope that helps.

For printing, I use Qimage Pro as that does a far better job than I can  

[lbenac]

normally I use USM with radius of between 0.6 and 0.7, and strength of 0.6 to 0.8 in the luminance channel only.
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Hello Lois,

As one said: every good thing is worth the wait :-)

You say "on the luminance channel"
Can I take this to mean that you are working in L*a*b* and uses Dan Margulis work flow of applying USM on the L* channel?
Or are you duplicating the background layer, USM the copy layer with blending on "Luminosity"?

I am using Lab through Curvemeister for some of the image with narrow tonal range but so far I have not used this sharpening technique. Instead I use Focus Fixer on the TIF in ProPhoto RGB.

Cheers,

Luc