[font color=\'#000000\']Hi Lisa,
Glad to hear that you found some of the edits informative. I would be interested to hear your results with the color checker, although I'm fairly convinced that there's nothing wrong with your D70. It probably just takes ultra-smooth and low contrast pictures that mandate post-processing to look like developed film.
An interesting exercise! I really liked your improvements to the first two. What did you do to get the greens to look so much better for the cliff-and-waterfall photo?
For example, I didn't do anything to the greens other than LCE and sharpening. Here was exactly what I did:
- USM 10%, 100, 0 (haze removal)
- USM 120%, .3, 1 (sharpening)
- Curves, very light increase to shadows to match original:
(Input 43, Output 49)
(Input 100, Output 107)
(Input 211, Output 208)
That last was needed to partly undo the effects of the LCE, and is not needed if you are more careful than I was (it was quickie!). Probably more important was the conversion to sRGB from Adobe RGB 1998 before saving as a JPEG; the examples on my page are somewhat unfair because I left the originals as Adobe RGB, which are then misread by my browser as sRGB files. Of course, you can see what happens when you print with the above alterations.
For the first one (Half Dome), I would guess that it was a combination of increased saturation (a bit too unnatural compared with the original scene, but that's OK) and local contrast enhancement; is that right?
Amazingly enough, again I did nothing to the colors but LCE and sharpening, combined with the sRGB conversion. Well, I did make it even bluer, but that doesn't fix the greens! The steps were:
- USM 10%, 100, 0 (haze removal)
- USM 110%, .3, 1 (sharpening)
- Color Balance, +4 to blue highlights
- Curves, very light increase to shadows to match original:
(Input 128, Output 128)
(Input 54, Output 61)
Again, the last curves thing is rather arbitrary and ultimately unecessary if you're diligent with the LCE.
Nope! I wish. No rocks that interesting around here.
Darn! I almost leaped out of my seat in surprise that there was such a formation behind Stanford. Oh well . BTW, in my own immodesty, I will offer my method for that picture:
- USM 130%, .3, 1 (sharpening)
That's it! Well, plus that pesky sRGB conversion, which suddenly makes the colors leap off my (assiduously calibrated) screen. I wonder maybe your digital workflow has a kink in the printer color management step?
Cheers, and please let me know if any of these steps help with your prints. Sometimes I wonder whether all my accumulated experience is applicable only to my particular workflow: that would be a major bummer![/font]