Early morning in Perth..

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys

This is a stitch of 4 images taken Pre Dawn about 2 years ago... I have been raking through the archived tossing out stuff and thought this one might be worth saving... I do remember it was very cold and I have posted a similar image from the same shoot (included more of the city to the left) but this is taken a little more to the right and earlier. Self critique is that its too early, and the building are still in deep shadow, but the sky is at its best at this time so, this is aimed at showing more sky, less buildings...

4 images taken with Canon 1D4 & Zeiss 18mm lens in portrait format using tripod and shivering fingers as I remember
Processed in ACR, mainly adjusting levels etc and a bit of sharpening in CS6. Not a lot else...

Don

[Don Railton]

Whooo, new monitor today & its too dark when posted..!!! Will have a look and repost when I figure out what's happened..

[Don Railton]

I hoped this would look a little better, but its still a bit dark... I have the profile embedded, Now not sure where the problem is...

[Diane Miller]

OP isn't too dark for me -- I love the drama! Darker buildings OK, too! I might even consider a radial (or oblong) gradient on the L side to darken the lightest sky there -- just a little.

Well worth saving! I like the slightly unusual perspective of the dock pointing to the edge of the smaller buildings on the left. Then the clouds lead the eye back over to the drama on the right.

Does the image look the same as before (with the old monitor) in PS or LR? The profile would only change colors, shouldn't do much to overall darkness. Maybe the browser is an issue. Or even an environmental thing such as a white vs. dark BG on the forum. Interested to learn what you find.

[Gabriela Plesea]

Not too dark Don, at least not for me:) I prefer the OP, more dramatic and mysterious:) Lovely image, congratulations !

Kind regards,

[Don Railton]

Thanks ladies....! Unfortunately I have not found out why it's darker when posted... During my editing I was able to see the corner of my pelican case lower rh corner of the frame ( it was a mistake to leave it there but...). But during post image was too dark to see it. I have just received my 4th NEC monitor (first 3 had pixel defects..) which I immediately calibrated. The calibration did not apparently change the image by any perceivable amount and this is the first post using that screen. So I have made lots of changes, obviously I have done one of them wrong...

Don

[Diane Miller]

What computer OS? There have been cases (I think with older systems) where the calibration isn't used by the computer. That was a case with Windows Vista early on, but I think it got remedied in one of the Service Packs. You could try calibrating with wrong settings, just to see if anything changes.

What a nuisance about the monitors. I thought NEC had a better reputation.

[Don Railton]

Hi again Diane.

Sorry, I did not answer your questions fully in the last post... I have copied the OP back from BPN and displayed it along side the OP I have on my machine. The Op as copied from BPN is darker than the OP I have stored... Just darker, no colour difference. I am guessing its the browser... I will get something printed to see if the colours/brightness are close to "as seen on screen' next. By adjusting the Level slider I can make both images look similar although I have not gone to the trouble of overlaying them and measuring differences accurately.. I don't have my old monitor, it got returned... I think there will be a NEC tech beating it to death as we speak...It was supposed to be hand checked for 'zero pixel defect' before it was delivered....but it turned out to be the 3rd one in a row delivered with a dead pixel, heads have rolled apparently..



DON

[Diane Miller]

Odd... People have claimed that nothing happens to change an image when it is posted here, and I haven't noticed any change in any of mine. Are you uploading directly, or from another site such as Facebook or the like?

When you say displayed alongside -- is that in your browser? How do they compare in PS? (With both converted to the working space, just for an extra step of removing any differences.)

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Don, my preference is for the OP as well...I like such scenes to be a tad darker...personal taste...in the repost the brightest area of the sky is too bright...you do not mention a grad filter, but for scenes like this I love to use my 3-stop reverse grad. My only nit is the steel railing at the end of the dock...I find it to me a bit of a distracting merge where it is meeting the reflection/shadows of the buildings....an easy fix if you are not opposed to evicting the railing. Three big steps to the left may have eliminated the merge. I like the leading edge along the right side of the frame taking us to the buildings on the right and the colours in the sky are lovely too. Nicely done.

[Don Railton]

Odd... People have claimed that nothing happens to change an image when it is posted here, and I haven't noticed any change in any of mine. Are you uploading directly, or from another site such as Facebook or the like?

When you say displayed alongside -- is that in your browser? How do they compare in PS? (With both converted to the working space, just for an extra step of removing any differences.)

Hi Diane,

yes, I copied the image from BPN back into PS using the embedded workspace (SRGB) for comparison against the saved image for export to BPN (also SRGB). they looked very similar if I adjusted the 'imported from BPN' variant by about 20% using levels, ie adjusted the slider to 1.2. My usual workspace is Adobe 98 and My system has a Win 7 64 bit OS. I'm still guessing its the browser ( windows IE) that is translating the values for some reason.

DON

[Diane Miller]

Odd, but I wouldn't bet against it. What happens if you use Firefox? How does the stepwedge at the bottom of each page here look in IE vs. Firefox?

[Don Lacy]

Hi Don I really liked this image and I preferred the OP the repost loses the nice deep colors of the sky and lightens the overall image to much to my taste. I pulled it into PS to pull just a little detial from the shadows using a luminosity mask and curve adjustment I then darken the sky in the LHC with another luminosity mask and curve adjustment. To finish it off I added a touch more sharpening using a blur technique I have recently learn about.

[Don Railton]

Hi Don

This looks really good..! Thanks for making the effort. I haven't had a chance yet to get to the bottom of why I have difficulty with my post not looking right, but I will. In hindsite I should have left more space between the river wall that leads of to the RH and the RH edge of frame..That's just a little tight..

DON

[Don Railton]

A repost without railings LHS of jetty as per Andrews suggestion. also a bit of an experiment to see how the colour of this one turns out.. thanks for all the comments..

DON

[Diane Miller]

VERY nice, for me!! You have a wonderful purity to the colors here.

[Don Railton]

Thank Diane..