Help with this great landscape look

[Aether]

I recently found myself with a ton of landscape shots, but I am by no means a landscape photographer. I'd really appreciate any help people can give in turning them into something special.
Here are some examples of the look I'm after:

http://www.christianschmidt.com/#/La...Page_1/Image_5
http://www.christianschmidt.com/#/La...age_3/Image_27
http://www.crismanphoto.com/#/Collections/Landscapes/20
http://www.shaunquinlan.com/#/portfolio/landscape/277/
http://www.shaunquinlan.com/#/portfolio/seascape/210/

I also included another one from Eric Freeman, as well as an unedited shot of my own for people to play with.

I love the odd color and illustrated feel of the images. I've heard some advice about starting with HDR, gradient maps for color, using the AIM profile conversion, etc. But I'd love to hear more about the sort of workflow that goes into landscape shots like these.

Thanx!

________________________________
www.spencerwatsonphotographer.com

[Instantclassic]

I'm also very interested in this as well.

[Nasturtium]

Did you look in the Christian Schmidt thread?

[Aether]

Yeah, that's what prompted me to start this one, since that thread was more about his white gamma look. There was great tips in that thread, but I was looking for more about this specific look.

[lunaxxxxxx]

i think its all about this: mulitple conversions, partly HDR toning, dodge&burn, and last but not least : colortoning and ofcourse styled motives.

[dvornik]

luna is right there is a lot of brush painting involved

[onesh0t]

I'd do a fair bit of landscapes. Everything I do is converted from RAW. The tools I would use most frequently is selective colour adjustments, colour masks, self-feathering lightness masks (not sure if that's the actual name, I made it up, as that's what it does), colour multiplication. To get the detail and texture out of objects, selective high pass filter, curve adjustment in LAB, then mask.

Check out http://onesh0t.deviantart.com if you want I can post the before/after if I still have the original files.

[longside1]

Hi guys,

I've just finished working on these shots which, although architectural based, were inspired by the work of Christian Schmidt:

http://matthewhalstead.com/wp-conten...-Form-copy.jpg

http://matthewhalstead.com/wp-conten...ntain-Form.jpg

http://matthewhalstead.com/wp-conten...ean-Form-1.jpg

Incidentally, the above images were calibrated for Safari. They look terrible in IE!

[Aether]

Seems like a lot of people either get what's going on, or are pretty close to getting this surreal quality. Does anyone feel confident enough to post a workflow starting with a single image or raw file?

[longside1]

Originally Posted by Aether

Seems like a lot of people either get what's going on, or are pretty close to getting this surreal quality. Does anyone feel confident enough to post a workflow starting with a single image or raw file?

There are a lot of things going on in these images. For the images I posted the processing for each shot was drastically different, so kind of makes posting a workflow very difficult.

What look are you trying to achieve with your imagery?

[Aether]

As far as the look I'm trying to get, I'd like to get the sort of dramatic illustrated look, where it almost looks CG. I'm also partial to the rich but muted color pallet, and that sort of metallic look to the color contrast.

I realize the approach will depend on the initial image, but any work through that ends up with something resembling these images would help me and anyone else interested get a good grasp of the techniques we'd need to learn.

[MacBurg]

Hey Aether, thanks for including me in your selection of images you'd like to learn about. It is kinda hard to explain the editing process for the images as there's no specific workflow that I strictly follow.

I do only get the camera out of the bag when the lighting is good for a particular shot, if it's not and I know it might be I wait, other times it just doesn't happen and I'll return home nothing lost. For a lot of my landscapes & seascapes I do location research, mostly to figure out lighting and time of day and to figure out access to a particular viewpoint, I use google earth a lot for this. I have a crappy piece of cardboard cut into a triangle that I place on my screen, it is scaled to a particular zoom level in google earth and to my 50mm or 100mm lenses. This helps me to figure out shots that I like to shoot, where I need to be for a particular composition and if its a morning or afternoon shot. Other times its just luck and being in a good place at the right time of the day! My camera's magical number would be -

1/125th @ f5.6

So that's a big key to getting a good image into the camera, having good light and sharpness to work with from the Raw. This is a retouching forum however so I better get onto some of that before the mods do me some damage

[MacBurg]

I'm not a big fan of HDR, though when it first came out I did shoot a lot of HDR images and used Photomatix for processing, some shots worked some shots didn't but it was always an end result of crushed contrast and loss of the delicate lighting that was there in front of the camera. I now use my own technique to extend dynamic range, not by a huge amount but it adds crucial information to the file that lets you push it and hold top quality. It starts with shooting 2 images on a tripod -

1st image slightly underexposed, spot meter for the whites in your image and place them 1 1/3 stops over midtone

2nd image open up 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 stops depending on your scene and shoot another shot which should be nicely exposed for your shadows

Make general adjustments to Raw files in ACR, enhance midtone>highlights for general exposure, enhance shadow detail in overexposed image

Open general exposure image and overexposed image in photoshop

Import copy of Red, Green or Blue channel from overexposed image

Rename the new layer "Shadows 1"

Hide "Shadows 1" layer and play Luminosity Mask action for shadows, "Super Darks"

Apply levels to increase contrast in "Super Darks" channel

Surface Blur "Super Darks" channel, settings Blur-15 Threshold-25 apply mask to "Shadows 1" layer (5616x3744px)

Set "Shadows 1" layer to "Screen" and opacity 70-100%

Go back to overexposed image and duplicate background layer into main image, set to "Colour" and move to top of layer stack

Rename this layer "Colour 1"

Use again the "Super Darks" mask for colour layer mask or use a new "Dark Darks" luminosity mask

Adjust opacity to suit saturation of image

Create Hue/Sat Layer clipped to "Colour 1" and set to "Colour"

Saturate appropriate colours, experiment with de-saturating blue


These are my notes from a long time ago when I came up with the idea, some further notes I have made -

When you have opened both images at the start and are at the overexposed image, go to your channels palette and click through each RGB channel to figure out which has the most detail in shadow areas. If you are working with a really dark image, lots of shadow areas, you may want to use "Shadow Darks" as a luminosity mask instead. Using the "Colour" layer towards the end is optional, I find it does give nice results on certain images and because the colour has come from a correctly exposed image for the shadows you have accurate colour and no contamination from noise colour. Depends on what your shadows are in the image and whether you want accurate and saturation in your shadows, depends a lot on your image too, maybe as a finishing touch you'll be adding a colour effect to the image so accuracy is not so important.

This all gives you a great start to an image, you have maximum detail to work with and a good subconscious understanding of the image after working with it for a while without thinking about too many other things. Next I go onto cleaning up the image removing any crap that doesn't need to be in the image, or changing elements that distract the eye. Then I create and save masks as new channels for things like sky, foreground, water, left hill, right mountain, island etc... Don't forget to hit the "Save" button everynow and then.

I'll also start paying attention to colour in the image, is there a particular colour of something in the image that doesn't go well with everything else? Can it be changed? If you have a large area that is one particular colour but may vary in hue it sometimes needs a masked solid colour layer set to "Colour" blending mode and to a low opacity. If it has varying levels of light then its better to use a gradient map for this. I'll also make a more global change to the image colour in general using a hue/sat layer or colour balance.

[MacBurg]

Onto capture sharpening and my favourite for this would be a sharpening of the lightness channel in Lab mode, this is on a new layer and masked out of places like the sky and anywhere I don't want sharpened, my saved masks are only a hotkey away. I also have other actions I use for contrast sharpening which come next, midtones are the focus here and again using masks for different parts of the image.

If the image is going to suit an AIM RGB conversion I'll do that now, following the details found in this post -

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...tml#post228052

I think the reason the AIM RGB conversion works on some images is how it pushes midtones into lighter values without blowing out highlights yet it still holds your shadows as they were. Gives a very unique look when it works, some images it takes a lot of further adjustment layers to bring it into play.

Image is starting to look nice now, has good contrast going on and a particular look to it, step back, walk away, even come back another day. I'll move onto dodge & burn next although this is something I haven't used until recently, I used to just lighten and darken larger areas with a mask. D&B is a far more accurate way to enhance the image from a pixel level through to carving larger areas of lighting, go at it.

Well that kinda brings things to a close a lot of things you just pick up as your working through the edit, your eye will know when something needs changing or enhancing. Hit me with any questions about any of the above, happy to help out.

[Flashtones]

Shaun, your generosity in sharing all that is most impressive.

[MacBurg]

Thanks Flashtones been a while since I've written a decent reply, I actually really enjoyed going back through the "Christian Schmidt thread loads of good information all throughout that thread.

[Aether]

Awesome, thanks so much, I can't wait to try this. And I super appreciate the detailed response!

[onesh0t]

MacBurg, thanks for sharing. How does your AIM action look like?
Mine goes like this:
Assign profile: AIM RGB
Convert to profile: Adobe RGB (1998)
Copy via Layer
Set blending mode to Multiply (100% opacity).
Merge layers.

It tends to push the luminosity of the image a bit. I think I'm doing something wrong though, because once I run the action more than once, the colour balance goes way off.

If I want to run it more than once, I use a bastardised technique of copying the image via ctrl + a -> ctrl + c -> revert to state before action -> paste -> run again. I think the colour profiles get messed up if I run it more than once.

[MacBurg]

Yeah the action you have is missing two key steps, or maybe it isn't as I can't check the blending options of you multiply layer, it should also be adding a curves layer which you should adjust before merging. Also it should be assigning the Aim profile twice, this is what the action I use looks like -

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/4...ionexample.jpg

Make these changes to the action you have by recording in the missing steps and let me know if that improves things.

[onesh0t]

Not sure if you and me are getting the exact same effects. But after some experimenting I came up with 3 different conversions, all of which give me different basic effects, which can then be masked or blended to taste. Check them out.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2kvi51k3m342302

[MacBurg]

Hey Onesh0t checked out your AIM action set and looks like your AIM RGB2 is similar to what I use. However I wouldn't run the entire action like you are doing, depending on the image tweaks to the Curve adjustment layer usually need to be made, I'll also check out the Blend-If for the multiply layer and make any tweaks that work for the image. Also I stay under the AIM profile while I do a few further adjustments like gradient maps and a light contrast sharpen. After I am happy with the effect I then convert the image back to Adobe RGB and then import it back into my original RGB image, or import parts of the original RGB image into the new AIM edited image.

I have one other action that uses the AIM profile, it's basically a contrast enhancing move that uses information from a duplicate of your image coverted to the AIM profile and tweaked. The action is called AIM Tones and you can download here -

http://www.mediafire.com/?xkyu86uddcs7zdx

.

[onesh0t]

Thanks for sharing the actions MacBurg. Definitely an alternative to my current processing methods. I want to look into gradient maps especially; I used them on a few images, but I still find them hard to use accurately.

[MacBurg]

Photoshop is all about numbers and maths in the background, every pixel in your image has a brightness value and a colour value, but try not to think about that too much

A gradient map is taking the 255 brightness values in your image and representing them in a scale of 100, 0 being black and 100 being white. It then maps colour to this 100 brightness scale of your image.

So you use colour stops that you can add or delete along the scale of 100, these are the little triangles below the gradient bar. With each colour stop you can select any colour, and adjust its brightness, hue and saturation by numbers or visually by double clicking on its little triangle. This opens the Colour Picker window where you choose your colour, I usually use the HSB values and tweak them by using the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Here's a quick example I made -

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1397/...cleexample.jpg

The circle on the left has been given a colour gradient, the circle on the right was originally black to white, but has a gradient map clipped to it with two simple colour stops. I simply sampled the Dark Green and the light yellow of the left hand circle and used these colours for the gradient map on the right hand circle.

You can then adjust where the colour stop sits along that scale of 100, this is called the "Location" and will affect what brightness value in your image gets changed to the colour in the colour stop you have set. Some images take a bit of tweaking of where the colour stops will sit and what their HSB values will be, you can see the affects of this live on your image while you tweak away. Some gradient maps will only require a simple two stops, if you are wanting to change the colour of an area that has a wider and more undulated layout of brightness values, then 4-5 colour stops is the norm.

[Instantclassic]

Would you go the same route as Chris Crisman's landscape work.

http://www.crismanphoto.com/#/Collections/Landscapes/1

[MacBurg]

I don't see the classic AIM conversion look in many of his landscapes, I see a lot of midtones, desaturation and colour toning going on.

[Instantclassic]

To achieve his look you would just do a couple adjustment and color balances?

[onesh0t]

To achieve his look you will need years of practice, a lot of time to travel and be in places at the right time of the day, with specific light condition and learn how to expose for your needs. Postproduction comes after.

[Instantclassic]

I realized it wasn't a simple point and shoot then quick photoshop adjustment.

[cassiobraga]

Hi guys!
This is my first time here.
I made this test to get your opinion.
If this is the expected result I can explain how I got it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10474375/test_look.jpg

[Instantclassic]

It's pretty close, mind sharing your post-processing?