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Forums > Back > How to shoot red flowers
#1
When I shoot red flowers I often get the red channel clipped and the flower does look bad. From the internet I found that this is a common problem with dslr and I did not find a standard solution to the problem. When I shoot with raw+adobe RGB and adjust the exposure carefully and then display the image with NX2 in the prophoto color space, the red channel histogram does not clip. But when I convert the color space into sRGB for use with jpg, the red channel gets clipped again. Is there any standard solution to this problem? Should I just reduce the satuation of red color?



Best regards,

Frank
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#2
it seems to me that the adobe conversion from a wider colour space to a more compressed space just clips what is too much for the compressed space to handle - i certainly am not happy with that result - so yes if you want srgb maybe easiest to reduce the chroma to fit and then grade away in srgb until you're happy with the results -



for me, when i've saved a final tiff in prophoto or adobe rgb and then find clipping in the srgb conversion, i tweak levels(sometimes a lot via levels)until they fit in srgb and then untweak them(mostly via curves)in the new colour space, it's not hard and doesn't take long - the result is visually the same and possibly might work as an auto run -



and then there are some that say that visually it may all be not a bother - but i worry - i suspect you might lose detail -



so ... if someone has a simpler way to make the waveform look as good as the pic, please say ...
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#3
[quote name='soLong' timestamp='1308296517' post='9308']

it seems to me that the adobe conversion from a wider colour space to a more compressed space just clips what is too much for the compressed space to handle - i certainly am not happy with that result - so yes if you want srgb maybe easiest to reduce the chroma to fit and then grade away in srgb until you're happy with the results -



for me, when i've saved a final tiff in prophoto or adobe rgb and then find clipping in the srgb conversion, i tweak levels(sometimes a lot via levels)until they fit in srgb and then untweak them(mostly via curves)in the new colour space, it's not hard and doesn't take long - the result is visually the same and possibly might work as an auto run -



and then there are some that say that visually it may all be not a bother - but i worry - i suspect you might lose detail -



so ... if someone has a simpler way to make the waveform look as good as the pic, please say ...

[/quote]



For the case of red flowers---whose color is dominated by red---it is indeed that some details are lost when much clipping happens and that is why I said the flowers look bad. When I tried to desatuate the red color of the flower, I often find that the flower does not look like what it should be, i.e. the flower does not look that red instead it looks somewhat yellow.



If I understand your second paragraph correctly, it is equivalent to the following operation: in the afterward processing of the raw file, try to reduce the exposure so that the right channel does not clip in sRGB; then brighten the image by adjusting the curve and keep the right boundary of the level curve fixed so that the red channel does not clip in sRGB. I did not try this approach so I do not know the effect.



Thanks,

Frank
  Reply
#4
[quote name='Frank' timestamp='1308297760' post='9309']

For the case of red flowers---whose color is dominated by red---it is indeed that some details are lost when much clipping happens and that is why I said the flowers look bad. When I tried to desatuate the red color of the flower, I often find that the flower does not look like what it should be, i.e. the flower does not look that red instead it looks somewhat yellow. [/quote]

sorry i can't reproduce the change of hue that you are seeing - in any of my current pictures, when i reduce red (in Ps) the picture just looks less red - i haven't used nx2/nikon since the 900 came along and upset various applecarts -



Quote:If I understand your second paragraph correctly, it is equivalent to the following operation: in the afterward processing of the raw file, try to reduce the exposure so that the right channel does not clip in sRGB; then brighten the image by adjusting the curve and keep the right boundary of the level curve fixed so that the red channel does not clip in sRGB. I did not try this approach so I do not know the effect.

Thanks,

Frank



the short answer ...



… yes more or less, but for me not in raw - at this stage of final adjustments i'm in Ps and tiff and i'm doing what your understanding is above -



ie. a recent perfectly fine prophoto tiff, in order to avoid srgb conversion dark clipping, the black levels in r&g needed to be set at 25 units and in b at 38 - then the very small resulting lower levels had to be compressed via curves to bring the look back (…sigh, what i do for a beautiful waveform)





a longer answer …



for my raw processing i output a picture with nothing clipping even if the look is not the way i finally want it, although i try to make the exposure close to being overall correct (best done in raw i think - although once in Ps i sometimes do radical changes for DR, zonal contrast and re-exposure for dark parts - there is a lot of info available in my files that can be brought out or hidden by contrast curves alone) -



i use C1 for my raw processing (it does almost all of what i want but not totally (yet) and Ps is familiar for me) - so in raw, once the exposure is the way i want it, i then bring the overall black levels up or the whites down to unclip anything that might still be a problem - so a tiff file comes out with everything available for lossless adjustment even though the picture at this stage might look pale with low contrast -



- if the shot is for the web the tiff output to Ps is in srgb - or in prophoto or adobe for prints -



then, in srgb, tweaks (levels, curves, colours, contrast masking etc) are no problem -



however, in adobe/prophoto tweaking for the most beautiful print ever, a conversion back to srgb might introduce clipping … to see what i then do, see the shorter answer above - hope this makes sense -





……. and having said all that, puff puff … take care with red, it's a dark colour and doesn't take kindly to being over saturated <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wub.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':wub:' />
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#5
[quote name='soLong' timestamp='1308329460' post='9318']

sorry i can't reproduce the change of hue that you are seeing - in any of my current pictures, when i reduce red (in Ps) the picture just looks less red - i haven't used nx2/nikon since the 900 came along and upset various applecarts -







the short answer ...



… yes more or less, but for me not in raw - at this stage of final adjustments i'm in Ps and tiff and i'm doing what your understanding is above -



ie. a recent perfectly fine prophoto tiff, in order to avoid srgb conversion dark clipping, the black levels in r&g needed to be set at 25 units and in b at 38 - then the very small resulting lower levels had to be compressed via curves to bring the look back (…sigh, what i do for a beautiful waveform)





a longer answer …



for my raw processing i output a picture with nothing clipping even if the look is not the way i finally want it, although i try to make the exposure close to being overall correct (best done in raw i think - although once in Ps i sometimes do radical changes for DR, zonal contrast and re-exposure for dark parts - there is a lot of info available in my files that can be brought out or hidden by contrast curves alone) -



i use C1 for my raw processing (it does almost all of what i want but not totally (yet) and Ps is familiar for me) - so in raw, once the exposure is the way i want it, i then bring the overall black levels up or the whites down to unclip anything that might still be a problem - so a tiff file comes out with everything available for lossless adjustment even though the picture at this stage might look pale with low contrast -



- if the shot is for the web the tiff output to Ps is in srgb - or in prophoto or adobe for prints -



then, in srgb, tweaks (levels, curves, colours, contrast masking etc) are no problem -



however, in adobe/prophoto tweaking for the most beautiful print ever, a conversion back to srgb might introduce clipping … to see what i then do, see the shorter answer above - hope this makes sense -





……. and having said all that, puff puff … take care with red, it's a dark colour and doesn't take kindly to being over saturated <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wub.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':wub:' />

[/quote]



Thank you very much for your very detailed response! I think I need more practice to see the effect.



Best regards,

Frank
  Reply
#6
how I do it:

shoot raw with dialed negative EV compensation, usually -1 EV, then in Lightroom: first shift the exposure with fill light and brightness to get the whole picture exposed correctly - this overexposes the reds, then in HSL module I lower the luminance of red and (when needed) orange channel to the point red is not overexposed, and after that use the brush with some + 20 to +30 brightness adjustment to locally brighten the reds as needed

it is time consuming to do with a lot of pictures but works good for me

few output examples here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/aRd6a3slJb-WM91c68mJfPF2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/xca0JUNZg_mmepN7SQ2QSPF2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/uE7UfDm94Rga6bADF2ZmO_F2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/V9dIy2ftCGrRbOLzd75a5PF2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

for print, I would add more brigtness to these pics because they would look too dark (except for the last one), they are just fine on the LCD

you can see some little overexposure in those reds, well, I am not a master yet <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='Big Grin' />
  Reply
#7
[quote name='stanic' timestamp='1309623691' post='9720']

how I do it:

shoot raw with dialed negative EV compensation, usually -1 EV, then in Lightroom: first shift the exposure with fill light and brightness to get the whole picture exposed correctly - this overexposes the reds, then in HSL module I lower the luminance of red and (when needed) orange channel to the point red is not overexposed, and after that use the brush with some + 20 to +30 brightness adjustment to locally brighten the reds as needed

it is time consuming to do with a lot of pictures but works good for me

few output examples here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/aRd6a3slJb-WM91c68mJfPF2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/xca0JUNZg_mmepN7SQ2QSPF2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/uE7UfDm94Rga6bADF2ZmO_F2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/V9dIy2ftCGrRbOLzd75a5PF2yNsaog1gkWa8pE7MbQQ?feat=directlink

for print, I would add more brigtness to these pics because they would look too dark (except for the last one), they are just fine on the LCD

you can see some little overexposure in those reds, well, I am not a master yet <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='Big Grin' />

[/quote]



That is actually a good way. I do it this way myself though I mostly use a color converting tool I bought in the iTunes App Store. What I often do is order [url="http://www.serenataflowers.com/Flowers-online"]internet flowers uk[/url] and then I make about two days of photography session and then two days of retouching session. I love processes like that... I always feel so inspired this way.
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