Brightening & Bringing Up Detail in a Landscape

[One4UAll]

Some yrs ago, I took this photo of a mesa in Monument Valley. It was with a 645 film camera and scanned with no adjustments at 16-bit depth. It's about a 162 MB file.

I created a Background layer copy (which doubled file size) and applied Levels to bring it up to what you see. I would like to bring out more detail in the clouds, reduce the haze in the mesa & bring in some detail from that, & brighten (enhance) the plants in the foreground because they look pretty dull.

There may be a noise problem & I do have Neat Image.

BTW, there may be some advantage to make a copy of the file, then make that an 8-bit file, do the adjustments on that file & then apply that to the 16-bit file. Seems I read something about that some time ago. It doesn't take much to get to a half GB file at the rate I'm going.

Whatever comments, advice will be sincerely appreciated.

[lurch]

Hi One4,

You've got your work cut out for you on this one, I fear, unless your 16-bit scan is a lot more tractable than the jpeg posted. I was about to declare that there was no useful information in the mesa but tried one more thing and it worked.

I always try to suppress noise as much as possible first thing. Most (but not all) of the time it seems to make subsequent work easier. I do this in Lab, with Noise Ninja. Neat Image will do just as well, I'm sure. My approach is to profile each channel separately and de-noise each one with different settings. That way I can get really aggressive on the a and the b for color noise while doing as little damage as possible to the detail in the L.

You probably tried all the standard Lab moves, as I did without much (any?) success. What finally brought out detail was a curves adjustment layer with everything but the mesa masked out (built the mask from the Lab b channel). Took each of the color channels and pulled the dark and light points in to just touch the histogram - same move you'd do in levels; I just prefer curves. Lowered the opacity on the adjustment layer to taste. To bring out the sky a bit, I added a new layer and set it to luminosity. To that I applied the red channel from the background layer masked by itself.

That's as far as I went. Bringing out detail also brought out some lens fog or flare, and produced a mesa that is greenish on the left end and purplish in the right. And the mesa got pretty noisy. Might not happen on the 16-bit file. But it's a start. And getting this far won't make your file grow hugely. Would love to see what you come up with.

<C>

[pixelzombie]

if you use photoshop cs3 you can use adjustment layers with 16 bit images which will keep your file size very reasonable...

[crazyfly1]

one4uall,
I took a run at it. Great picture. Mine is obviously way overdone, I just wanted to see what's there. Lots of sky, great color in the field.
Definatly work this one in 16 bit.
Bring into Photoshop cs3 as smart object and use smart filters to save your doubling file size with layers.
Most of what I did I did in ACR in just a couple minutes.

By the way, if you put the origional up on webshots or something I think a lot of us would have fun working this one with you.

[0lBaldy]

You might check this forum: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/hdr-hdri-tone-mapping/
and try a HDR
After the simulated HDR I used Imagenomic for the noise a couple times and masked the areas I wanted left alone on this sample you provided. Also did some selective hue/saturation adjustments.. I am sure that on the original 16bit it would look a lot better

[One4UAll]

Originally Posted by crazyfly1

one4uall,
I took a run at it. Great picture. Mine is obviously way overdone, I just wanted to see what's there. Lots of sky, great color in the field.
Definatly work this one in 16 bit.
Bring into Photoshop cs3 as smart object and use smart filters to save your doubling file size with layers.
Most of what I did I did in ACR in just a couple minutes.

By the way, if you put the origional up on webshots or something I think a lot of us would have fun working this one with you.

I'm providing the original image, warts and all, if I can get the URL to PhotoBuckets to work.

David

[One4UAll]

I have PSCS. With so many references to CS3, not only to this image, but other problem images I've been submitting, I suppose I ought to finally upgrade.

[womanmarine]

I attempted this from your first posted version. Used curvemeister and a Russell Brown technique.

I didn't go far enough, so will now try the original.

[grannysdc]

Using PS7 but thought I would give it a try also...

[Frank Lopes]

Would you consider a b&w photo?

Just my two cents:

The image is under-exposed by at least 3 or 4 stops
Probably because of the compression applied where you have it hosted, it has many jpg artifacts that make it hard to clean and bring out detail

I tried to fix it in color and even still I could bring out the details in the mountain, it also brought out all kinds of strange color shifts, light bands and artifacts that I didn't want.

So I tried b&w and this is what I got. I also replaced the sky.

Originally Posted by One4UAll

...
Some yrs ago, I took this photo of a mesa in Monument Valley. Whatever comments, advice will be sincerely appreciated.
...

[womanmarine]

Last try, from the later posted original. Did a bunch of stuff

[lurch]

When you posted the original unprocessed image I just couldn't pass up the challenge. Not going to post a workflow on this one because I threw everything at it but the kitchen sink and, besides, I've learned that what works on an 8-bit image is not what works on a 16-bit one. So this one was just for fun.

I do have a suggestion, though, if you're really serious about resuscitating this photo. Do another 16-bit scan using the scanning software to stretch all three channels over almost the whole range of intensities. Then do still another 16-bit scan adjusting the three levels the same way for just the mesa part (this is likely to involve a little guesswork). Then merge the two. I say that blithely not knowing exactly how to accomplish the merge - that's up to the characteristics of whatever two images you end up with. You may want to do some fiddling (that's an official term, by the way) before combining. With any luck you'll end up with a merged file that has good enough color and tone, and a dense enough histogram, to work on further.

<C>

[crazyfly1]

Very nice job Lurch. I agree on the scans. I would even think to scan 3 times, foreground, mesa, sky. You got a lot more out of the mesa then I could.

[lurch]

Thanks, Wm. Good idea to include a sky scan too - would give One4 even more good data to work with.
<C>

[bd-in-pdx]

That haze is a bit of an issue, it's just scattering the details of the mesa everywhere but your camera =) I liked Frank's b&w idea too, a nice twist with a bit of an Ansel Adams feel to it!

Here's my own try. Mostly curves adj. layers and some burning in the clouds:

larger version: http://www.downen.org/images/mesa.jpg

[One4UAll]

Thanks, all, for your responses and advice. Sorry taking so long getting back to you, but, well, you know.... I like Frank Lopes' B/W rendition as well as bd's, altho there's too much magenta in bd's rendition for my taste.

After looking at all your renditions, which brought out detail in the mesa, I've decided I want the mesa to be shrouded as it is in a sense of mystery, with only a hint of detail. You all have helped me decide what I want.

I played around with the image my usual way, just to see if I could achieve the effect I wanted. I think I used Auto Levels to get the image into some sort of recognizable and workable form. Then, I selected the sky, using the Wand tool, adding & subtracting to the selection with Lasso. I made a layer of that selection. Working on that layer, I did a Curves adj. to increase cloud contrast, then did some desaturation of the sky.

I selected (with the Wand, of course) from the base of the mesa to the bottom of the image to bring out the foreground better, making a layer of that selection, and using Hue/Saturation to enrich the plants.

I'm generally satisfied, now, with the image, but there are some problems that I hope you can see & that I need your advice on. First, to the left of the mesa is a selection line that follows the ridge to the mesa. I can't understand why that's there. Second, to the right of the mesa, the lighter hills in the extreme background appear phony. These are areas that had the marching ants of the sky selection. I don't know what to do about them. What do you think?

Then, along the base of the mesa, where I started the selection of the foreground, on the right side, there is an obvious disconnect between the base of the mesa and the foreground. Do you have any suggestions for repairing this?

Finally, about 1/4 of the way in from the left, there is a column of lighter pixels, noticeable in the sky. Should I just use the Clone tool and/or the Healing Brush to repair this?

You've all been very helpful and have spent some time advising me, and I owe you some feedback on what I've done & where I am. Thanks.

Here's what I've done, so far.