Sundown Kayaker

[David Stephens]

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5768/22790075986_4b81c58048_h.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/AHT6AA)Sunset Kayak (https://flic.kr/p/AHT6AA) by David Stephens (https://www.flickr.com/photos/dcstep/), on Flickr

Canon 5DsR, EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM, Av Mode, ISO 800, +1EV, f/8, resulting in 1/1250-sec., hand held, with Raw conversion in DxO Optics Pro 10.5

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi David - You don't have an embedded color profile and there's a pretty big shift when I take it into PS and Adobe RGB. I would suggest taking a look at it. It looks like a nice scene. Some of the highlights are blown and the blacks choked. I don't mind the blacks given the silhouette but the blown highlights are problematic for me. I would also prefer it with the kayaker less centered and more to the left of the frame. If it were mine, even though I don't usually clone, I would remove the contrail and its reflection. I'm not familiar with DxO so not sure whether you can recover the highlights more. I do think it's worth trying to process again.

TFS,
Rachel

[David Stephens]

Rachel, thanks for your thoughtful comments.

Please explain why the blown highlights bother you. I don't see any important highlights blown. Looking straight at the sun, I don't expect to see graduated details.

The color profile is sRGB, as shown in the EXIF. I'm not sure what you mean by "embedded." When posting to internet, I use sRGB; otherwise, it's Adobe RGB.

[Glennie Passier]

I don't know much about most things, and this is one of those things. Have a look at this thread in the ETL forum http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/132899-Great-tit There seems to be a problem going from Flickr. Agree with Rachel on the contrail and reflection and the centering of the kayaker. The lightest clouds draw my eye.

[Rachel Hollander]

Dave - personally I don't like the looks of the clouds with the blown highlights. As Glennie said, they draw the eye away from the areas of real interest and there is too much of it blown (it's not a case of a couple of blinkies). Not sure if it is because you are using Flickr to post but when I pull your image into PS, it shows that the image as posted does not have an embedded color profile. As you said, it should be sRGB for most consistant web viewing. Agree with you on Adobe RGB except when posting. As a paying member you can upload to BPN's server and as an added bonus your threads would have a thumbnail.

Rachel

[David Stephens]

Very interesting. When I look at the Raw file and the sRGB in DxO, they look exactly the same, but when I look at the sRGB file in LR there's quite a large shift, mostly lighter, with less blueness in the water and sky. On here and Flickr, it's considerably darker, when viewed with Firefox as the browser. I thought that Firefox respected the color space, so Flickr may be messing with colors, brightness and contrast. I calibrated my monitor earlier this week because I'm fine tuning setting on a new printer.

Now about the highlights, I'm trying to show what my eye saw. The sun has not quite set and it's right behind a couple of clouds, really lighting them up beyond what the eye (my eye) can resolve. That goldish, orange-ish coloration of the other clouds is in line with this stage of sunset, here in Colorado. Rachel doesn't like the looks of that, but I think it's what I see in this situation. Seconds before, I was shielding my eyes and not pointing the camera that direction.

I really want to explore this. I'm not trying to be a pain. I really think that what I've present (subject to the Flickr-whims) is very close to what my eyes saw.

Glennie, thanks for the link and comments.

[Diane Miller]

When you post an image without an embedded profile many browsers will render it incorrectly, and worse so with a wide-gamut monitor. See my tutorials in the Educational Resources forum; they also explain how to embed the profile.

The image is in sRGB; when I open it in PS and get the message that it doesn't have a profile, if tell it to assign the profile sRGB there is no color change. (This works even though my working space is ProPhoto.) Trying other color spaces does give a shift.

I don't see the problems here that the Great Tit image had. I wonder if that was due to a very compressed JPEG being submitted to Flickr, which then up-sized it. But I have seen very discerning people say it does bad things to an image.

The difference in DxO and LR is probably just how the different raw converters initially interpret a file. I don't know DxO, but LR/ACR will, as much as possible, preserve highlight and shadow detail. From there you have a lot of leeway to boost things as desired. It would be interesting to compare the image converted in LR -- to the way you feel is accurate. I think you may see some subtle changes.

If you're new to processing in LR, there is some basic information in the Tutorials page on my web site, linked below.

[David Stephens]

Well, I don't have time right now to research further, but the JPEG uploaded to Flickr is 8861x5611p and 58.4MB. Not really too compressed. When I download the full resolution file and view it a couple of different windows viewers, it looks like it does on Flickr and here, darkened. When I open that file that I downloaded from Flickr, it looks like the Raw file, as I processed it. All, supposedly sRGB.

I'll dig around more tomorrow and let you know what I find.

[Diane Miller]

The issue with a missing profile should affect color, not tonality, but it would impact saturation. Is it possible that when you say it looks darker, that the real issue is that it is more saturated?

[dankearl]

Not sure what all the fuss is about. The highlights are blown but if the photographer likes them, fine.
I know nothing about the embedded profiles, but to me the processing looks muddy, the contrail is awful and the comp is
not very good to me with the kayak leaving the scene, but landscape photography is all subjective, so if someone posts a photo and gets a critique
they don't agree with, that is what posting is all about....
I also would have done small things like get rid of the contrail and the lights across the bay.

[Don Railton]

Hi Dave

For what its worth to you I too find the highlights a bit too distracting for my eye. I also vote for removing the contrail, but as Dan says, your image your choice. As shot I would also crop from the bottom (to just above the contrail reflection) to emphasise the horizontal lines. I would have gone wider with this to make the shilloetted (= detail less ) kayaker smaller in the frame, although maybe thats a different image.

DON

[Don Lacy]

Hi David, A little late to the party but I do have a few thoughts first as been pointed out not embedding a profile leads to all kinds of issues with different browsers handling the colors differently so just correcting that will help. Second Adobe has admitted to punching up its profiles for the 5DSr and many feel they were overly aggressive in doing so which is the reason you see the difference with the Raw file in LR compared to DXO and if you are using DPP4 it would be different also. My finale though has to do with the blown highlights which many people find visually unappealing do to the harshness in which the appear on a digital file I find them distracting and the first thing I notice your viewers eye will naturally go to the brightest area of the frame and if it overpowers the rest of the image or competes with the subject then the image is not as successful as it could be.

[Diane Miller]

Don, good to know about the 5DS R profiles -- I hadn't heard that. Does that only apply to the Adobe Standard profile? (That is the default for an incoming image.)

In that case, of course, the solution would be to go to the Camera Calibration tab and choose a more subdued profile and crank things up as desired back in the usual adjustments. I know you do, but some people may not know that.

The Adobe profiles have been criticized before, but there is excellent color control to tweak things to taste with just a few slider moves after a reasonably close profile is chosen.

[Don Lacy]

Don, good to know about the 5DS R profiles -- I hadn't heard that. Does that only apply to the Adobe Standard profile? (That is the default for an incoming image.)

In that case, of course, the solution would be to go to the Camera Calibration tab and choose a more subdued profile and crank things up as desired back in the usual adjustments. I know you do, but some people may not know that.

The Adobe profiles have been criticized before, but there is excellent color control to tweak things to taste with just a few slider moves after a reasonably close profile is chosen.
You can always create custom profiles and there are some out there today you can buy or are provided for free to use with the 5Ds cameras. As far as I know its just the 5Ds cameras that most people are complaining about with Canon but Adobe has been known to struggle with other brands and cameras. Color is very subjective as you know and since Adobe is reverse engineering the Raw files to cameras that the manufacture does not provide them access to or the strengths of the CFA. I know Sony users have issues and a lot of them have switched to Capture One which Sony does have an working relationship with.