photos taken from light aircraft

[flight1]

What can be done to clear up photos taken from the air through the atmospheric haze and also through the plexiglas window of the airplane? I have many photos like this and would really appreciate it if they could be corrected. I use Photoshop Elements for editing my images. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[sdubose99]

Levels/curves to reduce the "fog," unsharp mask to improve the edges... and maybe selective burning/dodging to reduce reflections.

There's a decent article on this very subject here:
http://www.pcphotomag.com//content/p...an/photos.html

Scott

[sdubose99]

here's a quick re-do:

- straightened
- levels
- select the dark portion upper middle, feathered, and levels to lighten
- unsharp mask

Scott

[Jakaleena]

Here's what I did:

1. Dodged reflection

2. Selective color adjustment layer

3. Curves adjustment layer

4. Straighten horizon and crop

5. High Pass to sharpen

[Mike]

If you are shooting from a small plane instead of an airliner.

Open window so as to not have to shoot throught it, if not able to open window try a polorizing filter, sometimes you can get rid of reflections in window with this.

Fly on days with a good wind blowing that is blowing the haze away. Take barf bag.

Sometimes haze effect can be reduced by slightly changing your angle with the sun. Shoot closer to the subject so that there is less distance and less haze to deal with.

Remember the better the orginal photo, the less one has to do in PS, which means more time to take even better photos!!!



Mike

[Flora]

Hi flight1!

What I did here was:

1) used 'Selective Colors' to adjust the colours of the image.

2) used 'Free Transform > Distort' to straightened the image without having to crop it.

3) used the 'Healing Brush' to remove the repetitive patterns in the sky after straightening it.

4) blurred the image very, very slightly.

5) used the 'Curves' to enhance lights and shadows.

6) created an 'Overlay' Adjustment Layer and, using a soft black brush, enhanced the faded parts of the image.

7) finally, used a light 'High Pass' Filter to sharpen the image.

[flight1]

Thanks to all for your help. Your replies have been great.