Demystification of Tonal Ranges

[Aether]

Okay, people here may give me a hard time for asking a stupid question, but I wanted to throw this out to people a lot better schooled in color correction than me. I've attached a few pics from Nick Onken, and a comparison of one by Joey L and Diego Verges, I think they're both related to my question.

First off, Nick's work has a great film look (yes he shoots a lot of film, but it's even in his digital work), so I'm wondering if anyone knows how to get these rich film like colors in post from a digital slr (either in RAW, or PS). And the shot from Joey also has similar rich tonal range, and I included a comparison that was shot in a similar way, but looks much more flat and commercial in comparison.

As I said, I'm pretty ignorant, so I may be using the wrong nomenclature, but there is a certain aspect to both Nick and Joey's images that I'm trying to figure out. After using a high quality camera (Joey uses a P65+ medium format), after proper lighting technique, they have a professional polish that I can't seem to get down.

[jbedford]

Nick Onken has a section on his website named 'Shop Talk' where he outlines how he gets that contrasty, yet balanced look. He said something about preferring Capture One because its contrast was better...Check it out. Hope it helps a bit.

http://www.nickonkenconnection.com/s...y_tips/page/2/

[MacBurg]

As to Nick's images, and he says it himself on his website, there really isn't much going on as far as post processing. He works hard to shoot in the right light and knows how to control and manipulate flare well when shooting into the sun.

Post processing I would say push your images slightly warmer and pay most attention to skin tones, both colour and luminosity, when you are converting the raw image. In photoshop try (on a Mac) -

CMND+OPT+3 or CMND+Click on your blue channel
make sure you have your background layer selected and CMND+J
Set this layer to softlight.
Create a new Solid Colour adjustment layer
Hue@40, Sat@80, Brightness@85
Set to softlight and clip this to the blue channel layer you created below.
Adjust opacity to taste.

[Aether]

Awesome, thanks to both of you. I'm actually using Capture One 6, anyone familiar with this program have any hints?

And thanks MacBurg, that's a cool technique. It's pretty similar to something I do now, but I thought cmnd+opt+2 or +3 were selecting luminosity, am I wrong?

[MacBurg]

I have a "Legacy Keys" plugin added to photoshop so that the keys remain the way they should've stayed, using ~, 1, 2 & 3 for the RGB channels. Otherwise the hand has to contort un-naturally to use 4,5 & 6 with the CMND key.

[0lBaldy]

I may be way off but will add my 2 cents anyway

Photoshop Luminosity Masks...:

Tony Kuyper has a great explanation and tutorial on the use of Luminosity Masks (HERE) and RTP Member 'Amica' has provided an action (HERE) that puts all 12 Luminosity Masks (The 4 lights, 4 Darks, and 4 Midtones) into the Channels folder for your selection and use... (When the action plays, it might say "no pixels are selected")...... just click OK !