Homolovi State Park

[Dennis Bishop]

Homolovi State Park, near Winslow, Arizona, is considered by the Hopi people to be part of their ancestral homeland, and they were instrumental in the establishment of the park. The park had been closed for some time, but was coincidentally reopened the day the shots resulting in this image were taken.

D3S, ISO 200, f/16, 5-exposure HDR at 1 EV intervals, zoom lens at 19 mm

processing

flipped horizontal for composition
I can't remember if walking off the trail was forbidden, or if I just thought better of it, or if I wasn't thinking at all. In any case, the top of the foreground coincided with the horizon, and that wouldn't do so I did some land-raising (foreground through the second orange area) with the help of a mask, vertical movement, and the crop tool.
Topaz Simplify -- Watercolor II
Alien Skin Snap Art -- two Watercolor derivations, both Color blend mode and reduced opacities
base layer -- reduced opacity, masked to put a small amount of detail back into both the sky and the area just below the horizon
Photo Filter adjustment layer -- Warming 81, foreground only, Linear Dodge blend mode, reduced opacity
six black & white layers -- two Fractalius (Multiply blend mode), two each Snap Art Stylize Line Art and Topaz Simplify edges (Multiply and Divide blend modes), all at reduced opacities and masked
the resulting white lines (Divide blend mode) from the sky were combined into a single layer and run through Topaz Lens Effects for a zoom effect and applied with Divide blend mode
custom horse shape -- one of 15 in a set by cesstelle of deviantART, filled with violet, Luminosity blend mode at reduced opacity
Red Giant Software -- Knoll Light Factory for the light rays behind the horse
Nik Color Efex -- Tonal Contrast and Darken/Lighten Center
gradient vignette

[LinzRiverBalmer]

Extremely Creative, being a horse person, I love the horse aspect in this!!! Quite creative, way beyond my imagination. Superbly well done.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Beautifully done, Dennis. I love the imagery and of course, your execution.:S3:

[Anita Bower]

Beautiful, as always.
Re. land-raising--I'd no idea one could do that in processing. I think you can do things in CS that I can't in Elements.
Re. staying on the trail. In some outings with photographers, I've felt uncomfortable to see them off the trail, because of damage to the environment. Yet, often that is necessary to get good photos. A dilemma. I wonder what other photographers and lovers of nature think and do.
The light rays behind the horse are just right--not too much, not too little.
The shape of the clouds is perfect for the location of the horse.
I think the title should be different, that it should tell us why there is a ghost horse in the image. I think that would make the image more meaningful.
Someday, I hope to take the time to understand your use of black and white layers. I've experimented a bit, but not enough to figure it out.

[Diane Miller]

Very nice, and I do like that you changed that piece of the land. (Anita, I'm sure you can do that in Elements! I'll let Dennis explain further, but simplified, it's just a cutout area that's moved.)

The ghost horse is a nice idea and I love the shape! But my eye wishes for just a tiny bit more interest in it -- a trace darker or, better, with a touch of tonal detail. Could be hard to construct that, though, if it was a silhouette to start with.

[Paul Lagasi]

Well thought out image, as always diligent processing, love the horse...very well done Dennis

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

Greetings. I'm impressed that you can keep track of all the steps and write them out. I was going to say that the sky had this hdr kinda look to it, then I saw it is hdr. Hmm. To my taste, the sky demands too much attention. I wonder if the edges, lines, and local contrast were dropped a bit, a softer sky would allow the tonal tunnel to complete the star effect in drawing attention. Alternately, cropping about 1/4 to 1/3 of the sky, strengthening the diagonal from bottom left to top right would also work for me.

That said, I really like the detailing and color contrast in the rocks and the crafted composition of the land. Thanks for posting.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I like the vista and the PP. At first I wasn't fond of the reds/blues in the sky, but in the end it has a supernatural feel to me of the horse calling back his ancestors. Very well done.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . Re. land-raising--I'd no idea one could do that in processing. I think you can do things in CS that I can't in Elements.
Re. staying on the trail. In some outings with photographers, I've felt uncomfortable to see them off the trail, because of damage to the environment. Yet, often that is necessary to get good photos. A dilemma. I wonder what other photographers and lovers of nature think and do. The shape of the clouds is perfect for the location of the horse. I think the title should be different, that it should tell us why there is a ghost horse in the image. I think that would make the image more meaningful. Someday, I hope to take the time to understand your use of black and white layers. I've experimented a bit, but not enough to figure it out.

Anita, thank you. I don't have Elements, so I'm going to take Diane's word that it has the tools to raise the foreground relative to the background. The image, below, shows the mid-exposure shot in the HDR sequence. I put a duplicate layer on top of it and masked off everything above the orange line. Then, I used the Move tool to move the masked layer upward a bit. That, of course, left the bottom of the lower layer showing by the amount I moved the upper layer, so I cropped it off (an easy task if Layers is chosen in View>Snap To and Snap is enabled).

About going off the trail . . . In a work-related event a long time ago, we were given what turned out -- for me, at least -- to be a very revealing personality profile test. From that, I learned that creative people have some contradictory traits. Although I don't remember the details any more, I know that, even though I follow rules rigidly, if there's no "thou shalt not . . ." in place, I may do something entirely unexpected. It's turned out to have some good and not-so-good consequences. When I'm taking photos somewhere, I'll always check to make sure what's allowed and what isn't so I don't feel inhibited about going where I want to.

I'm glad you noticed the clouds in relation to the horse. It's where it is for several reasons, but its size was influenced to a great extent by where that would put its head relative to the clouds.

You're right about the title. I always enjoy a good title and should no doubt work on that.

In a few days, Denise Ippolito's MiniMag will be out. My article this month is on those black & white layers. I hope you find it helpful. (The settings I use in Fractalius were in my copy but they couldn't be included. Nonetheless, I might be able to put that in the Comment section.)

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . The ghost horse is a nice idea and I love the shape! But my eye wishes for just a tiny bit more interest in it -- a trace darker or, better, with a touch of tonal detail. Could be hard to construct that, though, if it was a silhouette to start with.

Thanks for your comments, Diane. I played around forever with the horse -- blend modes, opacities, filters, colors and was never entirely satisfied. Your tonal detail suggestion is something I hadn't thought of, but it merits some consideration. Hopefully, that wouldn't make it seem too real. Once I've finished with my current image, I'll give it a try and see what happens.

[Anita Bower]

Anita, thank you. I don't have Elements, so I'm going to take Diane's word that it has the tools to raise the foreground relative to the background. The image, below, shows the mid-exposure shot in the HDR sequence. I put a duplicate layer on top of it and masked off everything above the orange line. Then, I used the Move tool to move the masked layer upward a bit. That, of course, left the bottom of the lower layer showing by the amount I moved the upper layer, so I cropped it off (an easy task if Layers is chosen in View>Snap To and Snap is enabled).

About going off the trail . . . In a work-related event a long time ago, we were given what turned out -- for me, at least -- to be a very revealing personality profile test. From that, I learned that creative people have some contradictory traits. Although I don't remember the details any more, I know that, even though I follow rules rigidly, if there's no "thou shalt not . . ." in place, I may do something entirely unexpected. It's turned out to have some good and not-so-good consequences. When I'm taking photos somewhere, I'll always check to make sure what's allowed and what isn't so I don't feel inhibited about going where I want to.

I'm glad you noticed the clouds in relation to the horse. It's where it is for several reasons, but its size was influenced to a great extent by where that would put its head relative to the clouds.

You're right about the title. I always enjoy a good title and should no doubt work on that.

In a few days, Denise Ippolito's MiniMag will be out. My article this month is on those black & white layers. I hope you find it helpful. (The settings I use in Fractalius were in my copy but they couldn't be included. Nonetheless, I might be able to put that in the Comment section.)

Dennis:

Thanks for this explanation. I will try it.

I find titles very difficult to come up with.

I look forward to your article in the mini-mag!

[Anita Bower]

Dennis:

I just tried moving the landscape up, as you described. Very easy to do. I almost never move things in my images, but, now I have a new idea to work with. :-)

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . To my taste, the sky demands too much attention. I wonder if the edges, lines, and local contrast were dropped a bit, a softer sky would allow the tonal tunnel to complete the star effect in drawing attention. Alternately, cropping about 1/4 to 1/3 of the sky, strengthening the diagonal from bottom left to top right would also work for me . . .

Thanks for your suggestions, Michael. When I go back and re-work this image to try some things out, I'll take a look at softening the sky. If I did the Color Efex treatments in two layers, so I could better tailor the Tonal Contrast effect, that would make a difference.

Strengthening the diagonal is an intriguing idea. I'm sure I wouldn't have taken this shot if hadn't been for the ravine and its rocks. When I started working on the image, however, it was the sky that caught my attention. I'll take a look at cropping some of it away, but the diagonal is going to have to make a huge impact for me to go through with it. I do appreciate the suggestion, though.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Strengthening the diagonal is an intriguing idea. I'm sure I wouldn't have taken this shot if hadn't been for the ravine and its rocks. When I started working on the image, however, it was the sky that caught my attention. I'll take a look at cropping some of it away, but the diagonal is going to have to make a huge impact for me to go through with it. I do appreciate the suggestion, though.

So I worked it a bit... found there are a number of ways to go (to my taste, which is hdr not so much, ymmv)... Here's something along the lines of what I meant.

137287

Softened by denoising with Topaz DeNoise (including heavy clean color to my taste), masked ground & horse
Masked darkening curve, gradient middle to top to accentuate horizon tunnel

Looking at this I saw another crop to improve diagonal that saves the sky... a little off the left (but you lose the smiling rock in lower left;-).

Just some ideas...

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

I like what you've done, Michael. Thanks very much for taking the time to do it and for the explanation.

[Dennis Bishop]

Thanks, everyone, for your comments and suggestions. They're always appreciated. I reworked the image and came up with this, which incorporates some of your ideas. (When I compare the uploaded version to what's on my working monitor -- I use two, both independently color-corrected -- this is much more contrasty, and the darks are darker. Maybe I need to recalibrate . . .)

[Diane Miller]

Looks great to me!

But your description sounds like a browser issue. When I open the file in PS it says it doesn't have an embedded profile but if I assign sRGB the color doesn't change so I assume that's what it is (and that's what it should be for the web). Check my sticky on web viewing in ETL.

What monitors do you have? I was under the impression that only one can be calibrated / profiled (or, more correctly, that the computer can only use the profile / calib for one at a time). Old information?? A second monitor is generally used for the palettes / panels and doesn't need to be profiled / calibrated. There's also a sticky on calibration.

If the brightness of the screen changes when you tilt the screen forward or back, you need to keep your viewing angle at 90 degrees. After calibration, don't change any settings on the monitor -- if you do, recalibrate with those settings.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . But your description sounds like a browser issue. When I open the file in PS it says it doesn't have an embedded profile but if I assign sRGB the color doesn't change so I assume that's what it is (and that's what it should be for the web). Check my sticky on web viewing in ETL.

What monitors do you have? I was under the impression that only one can be calibrated / profiled (or, more correctly, that the computer can only use the profile / calib for one at a time). Old information?? A second monitor is generally used for the palettes / panels and doesn't need to be profiled / calibrated. There's also a sticky on calibration.

If the brightness of the screen changes when you tilt the screen forward or back, you need to keep your viewing angle at 90 degrees. After calibration, don't change any settings on the monitor -- if you do, recalibrate with those settings.

It could be a browser issue, I suppose. I always convert to sRGB before saving for the web. Maybe because I leave the sRGB box in Save for Web unchecked, the profile isn't embedded.

My monitors are a Wacom Cintiq, which allows me to use a stylus in editing, and a LaCie 320. I don't remember if it's my video card or the Datacolor calibration device that allows separate calibration of both. During start-up of the computer, though, individual windows come up confirming that each was assigned its profile. My images rotate as the desktop and the same one is on each monitor. When I look at them, I see no difference.

Before this reply, I ran an experiment. First, I compared the image in Photoshop with ProPhoto RGB color space to the one posted here. Then, I converted to sRGB and did the same comparison. In both cases, I saw the same difference between what was in Photoshop and what's posted, here. To make sure it wasn't a monitor issue, I reduced the size of both windows and dragged the OOTB one to my Cintiq, where I still saw the difference.

It's been a long time since I've recalibrated. I'll try that next.

The monitors are both tilted approximately the same amount, I never change the tilt (I'd never edit from a laptop because of the tilt issue), and my line of sight is very close to perpendicular to the monitors.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

The repost is just the right touch (best in Photoshop assign sRGB). Good show!

Best to attach the profile. Er, let me rephrase... Please attach the profile. Even if it is sRGB, different browsers will do very bad things to colors if the profile is not attached. Commentary on color is difficult on images that are not color managed (cannot be managed without the profile). Seen many discussions about color go south because of images that are not color managed. I think there might be a bit of that in this discussion. I took your image into PS (didn't pay that much attention when I did this before) and IMO the color is very different in Internet Explorer (what I use mostly) than opened as assign sRGB file in PS. Color management doesn't solve all the color device issues unfortunately, but without it one can be certain depending on the browser every one will see something different.

Rant off ;-). ( uh, just a small pet peeve. I've spent serious hours on this issue when I couldn't figure out why images I posted looked different from in my editors & previewers. Even color managed viewers are not all created equal, but all bets are off is color management is not engaged. Sigh.)

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Anita Bower]

What does "attach the profile" mean?

[Anita Bower]

I like both of Dennis' versions, but, probably because I like color, I prefer the OP.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

What does "attach the profile" mean?

The color profile is the color space descriptor by which colors are understood by the output device (printers, monitors) in order to express rgb numbers into the colors of the device. Color spaces such as sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, etc. each have a standardized color profile which can be embedded into image files (raw, jpeg, tiff, etc.) for the purposes of color management (an attempt for the color of each output device to be similar to other output devices).

Save for web in Photoshop has a checkbox for Embed Color Profile. This should be checked. Embed is a better word for this than attach.

Hope that makes sense.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

Thanks for asking the question, Anita. I had no idea how to go about it. But now that I do . . .

Thanks for answering the question -- and, before that -- explaining the importance of embedding the profile, Michael.

[Diane Miller]

Check out my Sticky at the top of the ETL forum (also in the Tutorials section and on the E-Zine page).

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/115811-Seeing-Images-Properly-Web-Color-Management-and-Monitor-Calibration

(The calibration part got posted separately as it was getting too long.)

But be careful, as Michael used the term "assign" in a way that might be mistaken. When you make a JPEG for the web you don't--don't--don't Assign a profile. You Convert to the desired one. (I know he knows that.)

But when you open an image in PS and see it doesn't have a profile (which PS will tell you if it's set up properly -- and it isn't out of the box!) you can try assigning ones and when you find the one that doesn't change the appearance, that is the correct one.

Too bad to hear that IE is still not color-managed for images that don't have a profile. I use both Safari and Firefox and they both are, so I saw them on the web exactly as they appeared in PS.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Too bad to hear that IE is still not color-managed for images that don't have a profile. I use both Safari and Firefox and they both are, so I saw them on the web exactly as they appeared in PS.

AFAIK, Safari & Firefox just assume sRGB for images without a profile (just can't manage an image without a profile). IE reverts to a set of web colors for unmanaged images (how everything used to be), more saturated and contrasty.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Diane Miller]

Still a bummer for viewing untagged photographs (i.e. no embedded / attached profile) on the web. There are so many photographs posted on the web these days, mostly by people who don't know about how best to do it. My choice would be to use a browser that at least assumes they are sRGB, which is the most often the case. I wonder how many criticisms of images here are because they weren't tagged and people are seeing them in browsers that make them into something they aren't (issues of monitor calibration aside).

I need to modify the PDF I posted, with that information about IE.