Northern Shoveler

[George Scott]

I was doing some file clean-up and found this one hidden among some rejects - I love the shovelers and we are fortunate enough to have plenty of them in the area from fall through spring. They tend to be a bit wary, so I had to sit in a damp place for a long time before they would come near enough - this is one of about 6 images where he would actually look at me. Comments and critique most welcome

Canon EOS 50D
600mm
1/500s f8
EV -1/3

[Bill Dix]

George: A lovely image. Great colors on the bird and the water, and good details and eye contact. Shovelers here are also very skittish -- I would love to get a good image of one as you have done here. I might consider a tad more room on the RH side, and maybe a pass of NR on the BG. The whites look a bit clipped to me, but I have just changed my monitor calibration and I'd be interested to know if it looks that way to others. Nicely done!

[Michael Zajac]

George, Nice image and I agree w/ Bill regarding the whites. I think a bit more room up front and a bit off the bottom. Good eye contact and details.

[Arthur Morris]

The whites look very bright at best. Love the image and the water; wish only for the bright green head of breeding plumage.

[Arthur Morris]

Aha! The whites and the iris are toasted..... How are you converting???

[George Scott]

Aha! The whites and the iris are toasted..... How are you converting???

Hi Artie, I am using ACR and I think (part of) my problem is that the whites in the original image are a bit hot (I only used -1/3 comp) but with the recovery pushed out I just managed to keep the whites from clipping. The second part is that I think I must have pushed the whites out when I did some curves modifications in PS. I'll try to redo the conversion and repost

[George Scott]

Aha! The whites and the iris are toasted..... How are you converting???

Hi Artie, I reconverted, and tried to keep the highlights from blowing - I remember reading on here about adding a linear burn to highlights ;), so tried it here to see if it helps. It's still on the edge, but the image looks a bit better I think

[Arthur Morris]

George, Your attempt failed as it had to. When there is no detail, you cannot restore density. The whites are still toasted. This excerpt from the newly revised and reorganized Digital Basics File should enable you to create an image without any overexposed white pixels (unless the RAW was vastly over...):

Recovery Slider
Whether you see any red warning pixels or not, first hold down the Alt key and then left- click on the Recovery slider. The image will turn black. If here no bright pixels are showing, you are done with the Recovery slider. Skip down to the directions for the Exposure Slider.
If any number of bright pixels appear when you hold down the Alt key and left-click the Recovery slider, move the slider to the right until all of the bright pixels disappear. If you move the Recovery slider all the way to 100 and there are still bright pixels indicating over-exposure, leave the Recovery slider and 100 and try the same technique with the Exposure slider; the results are likely to be unsatisfactory. (You need to learn to make good exposures in the field; see Understanding Histograms and Exposure Simplified in ABP II.)
Exposure Slider
Hold down the Alt key. Again, the image will turn black; any bright pixels that appear indicate overexposure. If there are some bright pixels, move the Exposure slider to the left until they disappear. If the image is all black, move the Exposure Slider to the right until some bright pixels begin to appear. When they do, back off slightly until the disappear.
Some folks feel that it is OK to have a few overexposed pixels in just a single color channel but I do not like that approach at all. The only time that I do not eliminate all of speckles is when they result from over-exposed specular highlights such as those in a bird’s eye, those on a wet rock, or those in a spray of water droplets. If you darken the image enough to eliminate specular highlights when adjusting the Exposure slider, objectionable digital noise will be introduced when you attempt to lighten the image with the Brightness slider.
Black Slider
Whether or not you see any electric blue Shadow warnings, first hold down the Alt key--the image will turn white and then left-click the Black Slider. If you see any colored pixels, move the slider to the left until they disappear. If you move the Black slider all the way to the left and there are still some colored pixels indicating underexposed shadow areas, simply leave the slider at 0 and continue. If there are no colored pixels when you hold down the Alt key and left-click the Black slider, move the slider to the right until some colored pixels begin to appear and then back off.
Brightness Slider
The Brightness Slider is pretty much the same as the middle tone slider in Levels in Photoshop. Before adjusting the Brightness slider to my personal taste I make a habit of visiting the Avian Forum at Bird Photographers.Net here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...isplay.php?f=2. Then I scroll down to the bottom to the calibration strip. Next I adjust the angle of my monitor so that I can differentiate the tonalities of the last two or three dark boxes on the left and the two or three light/white boxes on the right. By doing this I know that my Brightness Slider adjustments will be accurate. Now simply adjust the slider until the brightness of the image looks good to you.
(Note: I never touch the Curves tab in ACR.)

[George Scott]

George, Your attempt failed as it had to. When there is no detail, you cannot restore density. The whites are still toasted. This excerpt from the newly revised and reorganized Digital Basics File should enable you to create an image without any overexposed white pixels (unless the RAW was vastly over...):

Recovery Slider
Whether you see any red warning pixels or not, first hold down the Alt key and then left- click on the Recovery slider. The image will turn black. If here no bright pixels are showing, you are done with the Recovery slider. Skip down to the directions for the Exposure Slider.
If any number of bright pixels appear when you hold down the Alt key and left-click the Recovery slider, move the slider to the right until all of the bright pixels disappear. If you move the Recovery slider all the way to 100 and there are still bright pixels indicating over-exposure, leave the Recovery slider and 100 and try the same technique with the Exposure slider; the results are likely to be unsatisfactory. (You need to learn to make good exposures in the field; see Understanding Histograms and Exposure Simplified in ABP II.)
Exposure Slider
Hold down the Alt key. Again, the image will turn black; any bright pixels that appear indicate overexposure. If there are some bright pixels, move the Exposure slider to the left until they disappear. If the image is all black, move the Exposure Slider to the right until some bright pixels begin to appear. When they do, back off slightly until the disappear.
Some folks feel that it is OK to have a few overexposed pixels in just a single color channel but I do not like that approach at all. The only time that I do not eliminate all of speckles is when they result from over-exposed specular highlights such as those in a bird’s eye, those on a wet rock, or those in a spray of water droplets. If you darken the image enough to eliminate specular highlights when adjusting the Exposure slider, objectionable digital noise will be introduced when you attempt to lighten the image with the Brightness slider.
Black Slider
Whether or not you see any electric blue Shadow warnings, first hold down the Alt key--the image will turn white and then left-click the Black Slider. If you see any colored pixels, move the slider to the left until they disappear. If you move the Black slider all the way to the left and there are still some colored pixels indicating underexposed shadow areas, simply leave the slider at 0 and continue. If there are no colored pixels when you hold down the Alt key and left-click the Black slider, move the slider to the right until some colored pixels begin to appear and then back off.
Brightness Slider
The Brightness Slider is pretty much the same as the middle tone slider in Levels in Photoshop. Before adjusting the Brightness slider to my personal taste I make a habit of visiting the Avian Forum at Bird Photographers.Net here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...isplay.php?f=2. Then I scroll down to the bottom to the calibration strip. Next I adjust the angle of my monitor so that I can differentiate the tonalities of the last two or three dark boxes on the left and the two or three light/white boxes on the right. By doing this I know that my Brightness Slider adjustments will be accurate. Now simply adjust the slider until the brightness of the image looks good to you.
(Note: I never touch the Curves tab in ACR.)

Thanks Artie, appreciate you taking the time to do this - I went back again, followed the instructions and did nothing else to the image except NR, Crop & USM. Repost included, while on ACR I managed to avoid the whites clipping they are still hot - I guess I should have checked the histogram on site a bit more diligently. Great discussion, many thanks

George

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Artie, appreciate you taking the time to do this - I went back again, followed the instructions and did nothing else to the image except NR, Crop & USM. Repost included, while on ACR I managed to avoid the whites clipping they are still hot - I guess I should have checked the histogram on site a bit more diligently. Great discussion, many thanks.George

Hey George, You are welcome. This is what we are here for. :)

You said, "while on ACR I managed to avoid the whites clipping they are still hot...."

#1: the posted JPEG is still showing a good amount of clipping of the whites and the yellow iris when I go to Levels, hold down the ALT key, and left click on the Highlight Slider. Therefore, what you say above does not make sense (unless you are somehow inadvertently creating the clipping when you create the JPEG....) If you truly managed to avoid clipping the whites as seen in ACR while moving the Recovery Slider to the right while holding down the ALT key, then the image in Photoshop should show no clipping at all (nor should the JPEG).

#2: Furthermore, whites can be bright when they are not clipped, but they cannot be "hot" at least as we use the term here on BPN. To this community, hot = overexposed and detail-less. The time to Multiply--or better yet--to use Linear Burn, is when whites are bright but not clipped.

#3: You stated, "I guess I should have checked the histogram on site a bit more diligently." There is no guessing about that. Failing to check for flashing highlights is a crime of the highest degree in digital photography. When you screw up badly, there are times that you simply cannot save what would otherwise be a beautiful image.

I mentioned Digital Basics before. In "The Art of Bird Photography II (916 pages on CD only)," there is a section on understanding and evaluating histgorams followed by a section called Exposure Simplified." Reading, studying, and eventually owning each of these would have saved you here.

I have ranted here, in BAA Bulletins, and on the Blog about folks who own $8,000 lenses but fail to do the work (study and practice) that will enable them to consistently create technically perfect images so I shall not continue and hope that you and others who read this will be inspired.

When I began in 1983 there was not solid information around and, we were using film where exposure was infinitely more difficult than with digital. With digital there are no excuses. Check for flashing highlights after the first capture in a given situation (unless you know exactly what your camera will do in a given situation).

#4: Every camera is different: if this were taken with the Mark III at -1/3 stop, it would have likely been a bit underexposed. With most Nikon cameras it would have been miles over--the whites would have been toasted. With the 50D it is likely that -1 stop would have been right on. What happened is that the meter saw the dark green water and opened up so much (despite your -1/3 stop) that the whites were burned.

#5: This is a wonderful image. Do me one a favor: bring the RAW into ACR, move the Recovery Slider all the way to the right. Then move the Exposure Slider all the way to the right. Then create a JPEG and post it here. We may be able to save this image. (There may still be one more trick left if this attempt fails...)

You can learn about or order Digital Basics and ABP II here: https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/ca....aspx?catid=32. In addition, there is info on the original ABP (soft cover). The first book contains the finest coverage of Exposure Theory that you will find anywhere for folks using any type of SLR. :)

[Harshad Barve]

Guruji

I have bookmarked this thread :)
Thanks a ton for such a detailed explanation

George
One beautiful image
TFS

[Arthur Morris]

YAW Bhai. Once the lessons are complete, it shall be copied to the ER (Educational Resources), BPNs most under-utilized Forum.

[Harshad Barve]

YAW Bhai. Once the lessons are complete, it shall be copied to the ER (Educational Resources), BPNs most under-utilized Forum.

Guruji , but ER has been very helpful to me :)

[Arthur Morris]

Bhai; TIG! (That is good!)

[Arthur Morris]

Scroll down to Panes 9-11 here for some more helpful info:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...d=1#post398904

[Mike Milicia]

Assuming that there is any detail in the whites to recover, another useful tool in Adobe Camera RAW 5 (CS4 or Lightroom 2) is the Adjustment Brush. This allows you to selectively adjust portions of the image in Camera RAW. You effectively paint a mask for the areas that you want to adjust using a very soft brush and then specify adjustments that you would like to apply to that area only. For recovering whites, my first step is to use the Recovery slider. However, I have found that aggressive use of the Recovery slider can lead to color shifts so I usually try not to go beyond 15 or so. But if that is not sufficient to recover the whites or they are still a bit brighter than I would like, I then use the Adjustment Brush to select the bright areas and then reduce the exposure selectively for those areas. Depending on the image and how much adjustment is needed, it can be a little tricky to get the mask right so that the adjustment blends nicely, but it does an amazing job and is worth spending some time on when needed.

[George Scott]

Hey George, You are welcome. This is what we are here for. :)

HI Again George,

re:

Wow, this is a great thread - thanks for all the clarifications & tips Artie.

YAW.

So I opened up in ACR, moved recovery all the way right and I assume you meant to move the exposure slider left?

Yes, to the left....

I saw you had a similar thread in the educational resources, and reading through I followed those instructions and Alt clicked the Exposure slider until the red pixels disappeared. The image is posted here - I also have an image where the slider has been moved all the way right which I'll post after this one.

In this case, you had to move the Recovery Slider so far to the right that the rest of the image is horribly underexposed. When I tried to lighted it it turned to mud.... So the answer is to check the histogram and check for flashing highlight in the field. As the whites are recoverable Mike's suggestion to use the Adjustment Brush on the RAW file in CS-4 might work.

I am gonna try something. Be right back.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Again George,

re:

Wow, this is a great thread - thanks for all the clarifications & tips Artie.

YAW.

So I opened up in ACR, moved recovery all the way right and I assume you meant to move the exposure slider left?

Yes, to the left....

I saw you had a similar thread in the educational resources, and reading through I followed those instructions and Alt clicked the Exposure slider until the red pixels disappeared. The image is posted here - I also have an image where the slider has been moved all the way right which I'll post after this one.

I deleted that one as it was irrelevant.

In this case, you had to move the Recovery Slider so far to the right that the rest of the image is horribly underexposed. When I tried to lighted it it turned to mud.... So the answer is to check the histogram and check for flashing highlight in the field. As the whites are recoverable Mike's suggestion to use the Adjustment Brush on the RAW file in CS-4 might work.

I am gonna try something. Be right back.

[Arthur Morris]

Okie dokie. I painted a Quick Mask of the whites (and the eye to help with alignment) of the image in Pane #17 and then used the Move Tool to bring it on top of the image in Pane #9. (You must have cropped the image in Pane #9 as the QM layer did not register perfectly with the light image; I transformed it a bit....)

The whites looked a bit dark as expected so I reduced the Opacity of the imported layer to about 80% and then used a 40% Eraser to lighten the whites that had not looked too bad originally.

Though less than perfect the repost gives you an idea of what is possible when you convert the image for the mid-tones, convert it again dark to save the whites, and then combine the two.

Again, it is much better to get it right in the field....

[Arthur Morris]

Here is the histogram that shows no clipping of the highlights. Note that the blacks are clipped. We can always live with those.

Suggestions to all: purchase, read and study ABP, ABP II, and Digital Basics. But only if you want to become a better nature photographer.

[George Scott]

Okie dokie. I painted a Quick Mask of the whites (and the eye to help with alignment) of the image in Pane #17 and then used the Move Tool to bring it on top of the image in Pane #9. (You must have cropped the image in Pane #9 as the QM layer did not register perfectly with the light image; I transformed it a bit....)

The whites looked a bit dark as expected so I reduced the Opacity of the imported layer to about 80% and then used a 40% Eraser to lighten the whites that had not looked too bad originally.

Though less than perfect the repost gives you an idea of what is possible when you convert the image for the mid-tones, convert it again dark to save the whites, and then combine the two.

Again, it is much better to get it right in the field....

Artie, this has been a great resource for me and I'm sure many others - many thanks, this is what I appreciate most about this forum! ACR is relatively new to me, having used Nikon Capture for the longest time, and it's just great to have access to this type of expertise right here. Great stuff, I now have some more reading to do...
Thanks again
George

[Harshad Barve]

Artie, this has been a great resource for me and I'm sure many others -

for me too Guruji ,

[Arthur Morris]

Artie, this has been a great resource for me and I'm sure many others - many thanks, this is what I appreciate most about this forum! ACR is relatively new to me, having used Nikon Capture for the longest time, and it's just great to have access to this type of expertise right here. Great stuff, I now have some more reading to do... Thanks again George

You are most welcome. I am not sure if Nikon Capture NX has a Recovery Slider or something that does the same thing. Can anyone help with that? Harshad-bhai?

[Arthur Morris]

ps: Actually, if you converted one normally and one very dark you could create mask of the "saved" whites as I did and overlay it.

[Harshad Barve]

You are most welcome. I am not sure if Nikon Capture NX has a Recovery Slider or something that does the same thing. Can anyone help with that? Harshad-bhai?

Guruji
I do use Capture NX and has highlight protection slider but I use Capture NX only for my Tiger images ( As I understand that subject better ). For birds I have not yet used Capture NX. Capture NX is complicated software & requires huge RAM for sure. As I have not learnt Capture NX fully I am using ACR ( getting help is easy with ACR )
But Capture NX is strongly recommanded for Nikon users. Mital Patel uses Capture NX and if you permit I will forward this link to him and will ask to put his thoughts. He is too good with Capture NX :)

[Arthur Morris]

Harshad-bhia, Please do ask Mital to help us. You never need my permission to do that. I want to learn too.

[Harshad Barve]

Guruji

I have forwared link to Mitalbhai and I am sure he will add his thoughts on Capture NX within few hours ,

[George Scott]

You are most welcome. I am not sure if Nikon Capture NX has a Recovery Slider or something that does the same thing. Can anyone help with that? Harshad-bhai?

Artie, it's been some time since I uninstalled it but as I recall there is no Recovery Slider per se in the version of NX I had - you can however add a black, neutral or white point and adjust the dynamic range of the image and luminosity of each point. It seems to work like the levels function in PS, but I'm sure there are current users out there who have a more contemporary understanding of it. I really enjoyed the U-point technology among other features, and thought that NX was a great application for Nikon users - it had real performance issues though, and I lost patience and uninstalled it eventually. In addition, I started using Canon gear so it became less of an issue for me - except for my now steep learning curve ;-). This image was in fact from my first ever excursion with my new set-up - I should have posted it earlier and got a jump start!
Many Thanks, this has been educational for me and many others I'm sure
George

[Harshad Barve]

My appologies , I should have mentioned Capture NX 2 :o

[George Scott]

My appologies , I should have mentioned Capture NX 2 :o

Hey Harshad no apologies needed - is NX2 much better than NX? I might think about reinstalling and upgrading since I still take all my macro images and landscapes with the Nikon... persuade me!!
George

[Mital Patel]

dear art.

Well i am in bit of hurry as going out.
here is what i did to recover.

Duplicate the layer first form your original post.
used Nik Color Efex Pro and inside that i used TOnal Contrast with everything set to 0 except lil highlight recovery.
removed halos created in water area in white's by eraser.

I dont Use ACR since i learnt that it dosent read my cameras full raw features so i better trust on CaptureNX and will see the entire discussion in later free as am in lil hurry to rush..

please let me know what do u think artie as i just expcted to work on white's only a little quick.

[Mital Patel]

My apologize first for linking the big file of screen capture but it was to show the alyout and setting along with image as well which could not be fit on smaller view.

here is what i would do on your jpg to recover highlights into NX.
i personally feel that i may wish to try my hands on raw if allowed to work on with DPP and PS

though its not needed as the guru (ARTIE) dosent require that but for specifically the highlight recovery i may suggest to work on either PS or Capture NX (Highlight Protection)..

[George Scott]

ps: Actually, if you converted one normally and one very dark you could create mask of the "saved" whites as I did and overlay it.

So, you had me intrigued and I did a couple of conversions and created a layer from the highlights of the darker image. Overlaid it, reduced the opacity to 50% and I think it looks better than my original rework for sure- someone with better PS skills could make it really work, but for a few minutes effort I think there's promise.

[Mital Patel]

ok after reading things here what i think is that the white's look good on my nx version as it goes with the exposure level with overall image. there is a way to recover from raw as suggested in layers but i think that would be little manipulated version as what we have the exposure and contrast level on blacks and midtones it was obvious to get the white's burned out and i think recovery visible either of my posted version looks fair to me as it has a bit of data in it now compare to light we have on shoveler.

plz artie put your comment on this one and we may take this to futher.

thanks harshad bhai for pointing to me as i really love to involve in this (am not expert on NX like many people are very knowledgeable here than what i know).

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Mital but in the original and the repost in Pane #9 the whites are showing as over-exposed/burned/toasted/detail-less in Photoshop via the JPEG histogram which I find reflects the optimized file...

It sounds as if you are saying that you are OK with the toasted whites as long as the rest of the image looks good. If I am understanding you correctly, then I would not be happy with that approach.

So I guess that there is nothing in the Nikon conversion program similar to the Recovery Slider in ACR.