Moon Rise ... Anyway of making the moon stand out more?

[Bob Reimer]

As we were driving in to a little abandoned cultivation in Oman yesterday, I noticed the moon rise over the mountains behind it and though that this image might work. Being lazy, I borrowed my wife's D80 and quickly created a few images rather than going to get my camera from the back of the truck as everyone was hungry and wanting to get lunch :) I tried to get the fortified house at about the lower 1/3 and the moon at the 1/3 point at the top. The image came out pretty flat as it was about 2pm and the sun is still pretty high. Run through DxO Optics 5.04 with high saturation, medium contrast and lens corrections. The image has not been cropped. On the web version, I don't really like what it's done along the top of the mountains where they meet the sky. It's not like that in the full sized image.

The moon really gets lost with the blue cast. Any suggestions for getting it to be a bit more obvious? It sure stood out better to the eye! I have Capture NX, but haven't taken the time to figure out how to use it yet since I normally really like the results DxO Optics gives me without having to tinker a lot. I suspect Capture NX may handle the moon better with its control points by perhaps setting the moon to white ... may be I should try something similar in DxO ...

D80 with 70-300VR at 122mm, F10, 1/320sec, ISO 200, 0 EV, Aperture priority, matrix metering

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Bob, Here's one I took today in Green Valley at 5: PM. We're at 3000' . . . Gus

1/400s
F 7.1
ISO 200
600 MM hand held
Auto WB

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Bob,

I just pointed at the Moon & clicked the shutter, but here is a good link http://www.mreclipse.com/MrEclipse.html Gus

[Harold Davis]

hi bob, i gave this one a shot, but i had some problems. i dont know if it was because the file was so small or what, but some artifacts started showing up above the mountain line. it actually looks rigid, not sure what it is:cool: basically, i only established the black and white control points, adjusted the light down a tick and the contrast up quite a bit. i desaturated the image some and added a touch of warming filter. and that's it. i tried to sharpen it to get the moon to pop and the file wouldnt take even a little without pixelating.

bill may have been on to something with the picture of his moon. in PS you could clone out your moon and add another that is better defined, if you dont mind doing that type of stuff:D

could someone explain that line that shows up right under the moon that looks like the great wall of china? :eek:

[Bob Reimer]

Thanks for the attempt, Harold! I like what you've done to the small image, but there probably isn't enough to work with in the small image and the JPEG artifacts are popping up. If you'd like to give it a go, I can send you a full sized file off line. I like to avoid cloning things in when I can ... and I'd prefer to crop out than to clone out.

[Harold Davis]

bob emailed me the raw image to work with.

here's the latest. the nef was great. tons more to work with. i wish i could make the moon pop more, but it is difficult. i cropped a bit off the top, established the b&w control points, decreased some light and added some contrast. there was a blue cast over the image so i went into color balance and decreased the blues and added some yellow. lastly i added some usm.
no noise reduction required.

all adjustments were done in capture nx.

[Bob Reimer]

Thanks for giving this a go, Harold! My version is really over-saturated as I put all the saturation options on high in DxO Optics 5. This comes closer to the scene although warming it up a bit more might be nice. I've tried fooling around with a technique recently published on Luminous Landscape to select tones (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/Cramer_Selections.shtml) but I guess the moon tones are too close to the sky tone. I do have another shot of just the moon from the same day that I could scale down and drop in, but I don't like to do that for a photo contest entry which I was thinking this might be if I could just brighten that moon some more by getting rid of the blue cast on the moon locally.