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crimsonpenguin — Red Blue Flakes
Published: 2010-01-11 04:29:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 983; Favourites: 29; Downloads: 33
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Description
Yet another snowflake picture. I wouldn't have submitted this one, but earlier today I was explaining to ~Tanja0869 about blown highlights, and I realized: some of my photos I thought had irredeemable blown highlights, actually only get them when a color profile is applied. Which means, that it IS possible to get the quality in those areas back, if I do it before the color profile is applied (if I just didn't apply the color profile then it would look rather dull). So anyway, this is one flake which I previously thought couldn't be saved, but which I think I saved pretty good with Aperture's Color adjustments (mainly turning down the lightness a lot, and saturation a little, of red).Pentax K20D, 100mm 1:1 macro with +5 closeup lens, 1s @ f14, ISO100.
My other snow flakes: [link]
My article about snow flake photography: [link]
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Comments: 14
Thanks! That's really what I aim for the most in my photos; clear details. Thanks for the favorites too!
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gorgeous. it's cheering me up in this snowy weather
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wow, this is pretty again. Little ones and big ones. The colorful BG adds to the picture.
And now as you say it, yes, the highlights sometimes tend to appear only when making color adjustments. You are some genious!
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Thanks! I quite like it too, now that it's fixed.
Adjusting color, levels, etc. can definitely introduce blown highlights - but in this case what I thought of as the original had blown highlights. It's kinda hard to explain, but usually photos get a color profile applied to them by the program viewing them (like Photoshop or whatever; in this case Aperture). The idea of color profiles, is to shift the colors in a picture so they look the same on different screens or in print... Except I'm a bit confused when it gets to the part where a photo itself has a color profile selected for it, which has nothing to do with what it's being viewed on/with - I'm not sure what the point is. But anyway, cameras take photos with color profiles in mind, so they only look right with the profile applied (generally they look dull and unsaturated without it). So what I realized, was that my photo was fine before the color profile was applied, and I just used Aperture (which does "non-destructive editing"; you can never lose the original) to make the red less bright and a little less saturated, which made it fine AFTER the profile was applied as well. And one last thing: most browsers don't apply the color profile, which is really annoying! I have a program that will apply it to the image and save it like that though, so it's part of the image itself and will display right in browsers too. Which I did with this photo, but most of my old ones aren't like that...
Sorry for the wall of text.
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I read it five times now, and am still trying to understand. I don't really know what you mean by color profil
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Hmmm, it's hard to explain. I found a bunch of articles about them, but they're all kinda technical and confusing. Here's the wikipedia one, which is at least the shortest: [link]
Anyway, the basic thing is, when you apply a color profile, in general it makes the image more saturated, and in this case, more saturated red meant the red channel got blown/clipped highlights. But it was only applying the color profile for viewing, those blown highlights weren't part of the image itself. So I was able to modify the original image before it had the profile applied, and then when the profile was applied it wouldn't lose the details anymore... I hope that makes sense. I'm still confused about color profiles myself; the main thing was just realizing it was possible to get the details back, that I thought were lost. I hadn't tried before because I assumed it would be impossible.
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That is something I have to put some braincells into. I am still not really understandig. What I usually do to picture is "automatic histogram stretch" and then some automatic saturation if needed (which mostly is the case). As both are automatic functions, one should assume the program knows what to do
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Maybe this'll help; compare the picture here, to this one without the profile applied: [link] and for some stupid reason Photoshop's "Save For Web" makes an even more dull version: [link] - I really don't know what it does to make it look like that...
I often do Aperture's equivalent of auto histogram stretch, but often I change it after, so it doesn't do as much (or, rarely, so it does more). You would think it would know what it's doing, but in my opinion these automatic functions are often too aggressive. The way to do it manually, would be to go to Levels. In Photoshop and Aperture, it shows a histogram, and has 3 sliders under it; anything you move the right slider to the left of, will end up as pure white; anything you move the left slider right of, will be pure black. I think the auto functions usually go just a little bit past where there's no data on the histogram; but they're not quite as simple as just that. Anyway, best to try the automatic things, and then see if you can make it better or not manually.
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i will try that next time.
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