Daffodil

[Anita Bower]

I have trouble with yellows--how to get detail without making the yellow too dark. I'd appreciate suggestions.

I took this indoors using dark green scrapbooking paper as a bg. Natural light, overcast, from the right.

Nikon D300, Sigma 105mm macro, f40 ("relative"), ISO 160, .80 sec., tripod, manual exposure, manual focus using Live View.

PP: PS7 and Elements 7: regular adjustments plus high pass on parts of flower, and light green color fill

[Nick Palmieri]

Interesting angle Anita. I really like the yellow and green colors. I may lose a little off the bottom of the stem. If the yellows are too strong I would use selective color>yellow>and decrease the yellow slider and increase the black slider. I am just wondering if the flower is a little over-exposed??? TFS

[Julie Kenward]

Lovely composition and I see very little that I don't like about the yellows here - but they do feel a tad bit saturated? Is that the word I'm looking for? If you are shooting in RAW, I always go the hue / saturation panel and decrease the yellows a bit (usually about 5-10 points on the saturation) and then add that same number back in the luminance tab. Another trick is to move the hue to the warmer side of yellow so it doesn't get quite so neon - the green side of yellow tends to go ballistic faster than the orange side.

Hope that helps! :w3

[Susan Candelario]

Hi Anita,
The simplicity of the single Daffodil with the clean oof b/g really appeals to me. Good advice given already, but PS7 does not have selective color. You can use the hue & saturation adjustment. Select the yellows from the drop down menu - use the color eyedropper on the left and click on the area you want to adjust. That will allow you to limit the adjustment to that area. Crank the saturation to 100 so you can see how much is being affected. The color slider all the way in the bottom of the pallete will have some sliders... The color in between them is what is being selected. If it is more than you want, start bringing the sliders closer together to minimize the selection. Once you are satisfied with the selected area bring the saturation slider down until you are happy.
HTH

[Anita Bower]

Interesting angle Anita. I really like the yellow and green colors. I may lose a little off the bottom of the stem. If the yellows are too strong I would use selective color>yellow>and decrease the yellow slider and increase the black slider. I am just wondering if the flower is a little over-exposed??? TFS

Thank you for the suggestion. I'd forgotten about increasing black in selective color. It improved the yellows. Much appreciated!!

[Anita Bower]

Lovely composition and I see very little that I don't like about the yellows here - but they do feel a tad bit saturated? Is that the word I'm looking for? If you are shooting in RAW, I always go the hue / saturation panel and decrease the yellows a bit (usually about 5-10 points on the saturation) and then add that same number back in the luminance tab. Another trick is to move the hue to the warmer side of yellow so it doesn't get quite so neon - the green side of yellow tends to go ballistic faster than the orange side.

Hope that helps! :w3
Jules--I remembered this trick of yours, but a bit differently. I lowered the vibrance slider, not the hue/saturation slider. I went back and tried it with hue/saturation and it seems the same as using the vibrance. What do you think?
Thanks for the tip re. the warmer hue of yellow vs. the greener one. I hadn't noticed that.
Wonderful to get your good advice!!

[Anita Bower]

Hi Anita,
The simplicity of the single Daffodil with the clean oof b/g really appeals to me. Good advice given already, but PS7 does not have selective color. You can use the hue & saturation adjustment. Select the yellows from the drop down menu - use the color eyedropper on the left and click on the area you want to adjust. That will allow you to limit the adjustment to that area. Crank the saturation to 100 so you can see how much is being affected. The color slider all the way in the bottom of the pallete will have some sliders... The color in between them is what is being selected. If it is more than you want, start bringing the sliders closer together to minimize the selection. Once you are satisfied with the selected area bring the saturation slider down until you are happy.
HTH
Thank you so much, Susan! I had no idea I could do all that in the hue/saturation adjustment. This is one of the features of BPN that I love--getting useful tips and learning from other members. I tried your suggestion and realize there is a lot to learn there. :-)
By the way, PS7 does have selective color. Also, I use Elements 7 for some of the features missing in PS7.
Many thanks for your detailed and clear instructions!!!

[kostas nianiopoulos]

to me it looks pretty good , but is not only u , that u have problems with the yellows , i have by my self as well , and i know there is other PPL with the same problem , try to reload the raw file again a play around a bit with the tempeture , some times it helps :)

[Susan Candelario]

Thank you so much, Susan!
Anytime, Anita.

By the way, PS7 does have selective color.

Thanks for the reminder, I had totally forgotten it had already been integrated in ver 7. It's hard to keep up with so many versions. :2eyes2:

[Ken Childs]

I love the the comp and the 'pose' of the daffy....I've always had trouble shooting these standard yellow ones so I really appreciate this effort! I think I'd like to see either a little more space on top or a little removed from the bottom....or maybe some of each. :S3: The yellows have already been covered so I'll mention that the BG texture looks off like there are lots of compression artifacts. This is probably just the texture of the paper but you might consider blurring it or maybe giving it a heavy dose of NR. These are all easy fixes so you should definitely end up with a nice keeper!

[Anita Bower]

I love the the comp and the 'pose' of the daffy....I've always had trouble shooting these standard yellow ones so I really appreciate this effort! I think I'd like to see either a little more space on top or a little removed from the bottom....or maybe some of each. :S3: The yellows have already been covered so I'll mention that the BG texture looks off like there are lots of compression artifacts. This is probably just the texture of the paper but you might consider blurring it or maybe giving it a heavy dose of NR. These are all easy fixes so you should definitely end up with a nice keeper!

Thanks! I took some off the bottom and ran DeNoise on the bg--the paper had texture. I appreciate all the advice!!!

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Anita. This a very nice image and I see you have already received some good suggestions for tweaks to make it even stronger. I was going to mention the "texture" in the background, but Ken beat me to it. :S3:

[Brendan Dozier]

Nice comp, Anita. I think the yellows look pretty good, and I like your choice of dark green for the BG, though Ken does have a good point about the texture.

[Anita Bower]

Thank you for your comments, Brendan and Steve!!

[Mitch Haimov]

I'm a little late to the party on this one, Anita, but thought I'd throw out another idea for dealing with saturated yellows (and reds). I've found that if I set my camera to display the R, G, and B histograms individually they lead me to different (darker) exposures than does the brightness histogram in cases where there is a significant portion of the frame devoted to saturated yellows or reds. That is, if you base your exposure on the brightness histogram such that you just avoid clipping highlights then look at the histograms for the individual channels, you will see quite a bit of clipping. In this way, I avoid the need to address over-saturated colors during PP. Don't know that this is "better" than the other suggestions (could potentially lead to more noise issues in shadows because everything will be darker), but I do like the idea of preventing problems at the time of exposure rather than fixing them during PP.

[Anita Bower]

I'm a little late to the party on this one, Anita, but thought I'd throw out another idea for dealing with saturated yellows (and reds). I've found that if I set my camera to display the R, G, and B histograms individually they lead me to different (darker) exposures than does the brightness histogram in cases where there is a significant portion of the frame devoted to saturated yellows or reds. That is, if you base your exposure on the brightness histogram such that you just avoid clipping highlights then look at the histograms for the individual channels, you will see quite a bit of clipping. In this way, I avoid the need to address over-saturated colors during PP. Don't know that this is "better" than the other suggestions (could potentially lead to more noise issues in shadows because everything will be darker), but I do like the idea of preventing problems at the time of exposure rather than fixing them during PP.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've never worked with the R, G, B histogram in camera--something new to try.