EHEH Air Berlin Nightshot 081018

[Polecat]

This can go on for hours, days weeks

I feel that I sometimes want to make them too neutral/blue, a bit like the second Orion. Great as it looks, if you look through your eyelashes it looks almost like a daytime shot. That;s why i always try to keep some black and some yellow in it... (as illustrated by the difference between Falconcrests'editing and mine...)

In the old days Kodak decided how they came out.. what a luxury this digital "gedoe".....

[Maurice]

Nice topic! I too prefer go get the original colours clear as much as possible. A few good examples have been posted before, like the orion. But it is all a matter of personal taste I guess. Just try not to 'overdo' it.

[Polecat]

nice edit if u ask me....
Still quite dark, still some yellow in it....

[amarx]

One of my first night shots.

[Iwan Bogels]

Hi guys,

The human eye is an extremely good digital camera, with the best lens possible and optimum white balance. In combination with your brains it will help you convert the RAW image from your eye into a near perfect colored picture in your mind. (e.g. your mind wil filter out most of the yellow colored light and convert the colors to more realistic daylight colors)

Unfortunately the current range of digital cameras is unable to do this for you, so you have to do a little bit of adjusting yourselve on the PC or Mac. And that's where the problem kicks in....! We all interpret things a bit different, so we all come to different conclusions. Next to that not everybody is fully proficient with their image software, so it's extremely hard to get your computer to make the image look just the way you have it in memory.

Personally I prefer to give night images a neutral look without showing them as too blueish (almost arctic cold). In this topic I enjoy Polecat's version, but prefer Falconcrest's enhancement even better. But then again, it's just a taste of the moment......

Marcel, would you be willing to share your original RAW-file or large JPG, so other people can have a try at home and compare their results with other images posted here ?

Best regards,
Iwan

PS: Just a small bit about brain color filtering)

[marcel32us]

Thanks everybody for some great input. So far I like Polcat's version the best.

Iwan, Of course I'm willing to share the original file, I'll upload it to my site and share the adress here. I just don't have the time right now, so that will probably be tomorrow.

Marcel

[sfeyenoord1]

In my opinion the example of Falconcrest, is a very very good example what difference it makes by taking the effort to get the whitebalance right with ps. Some people like it how the shot is made, personally i would go for the natural colors, like falconcrest did

[marcel32us]

Iwan (and anyone else who would like to give it a try),

the RAW-file is available at: http://www.katsudokenpo.nl/temp/IMG_9716.CR2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (6.95 MB)

Now on to editting some more nightshots from SPL this morning

Marcel

[Iwan Bogels]

Hi Marcel,

Thanks for sharing the original file. I have been working on it, and it's not easy. Every time you change something you win some on one side and loose dome on the other. For now, this is what I like most..... But my opinion may change after I look at it again in half an hour.

Cheers,
Iwan

[marcel32us]

OK, cool.

I like it, but the big question is: how did you do that??

(still waiting for that LR/PS course).

Marcel

[Iwan Bogels]

Hi Marcel,

This is what I did, step-by-step. in screenshots:

The first two shots show my Lightroom development settings. These are easy to copy. After that I exported the image to Photoshop CS2.






In Photoshop CS2 I duplicated the background layer in order to work on a copy of the original. This way I could always undo any change I was about to make. After that I made several adjustment layers in order to correct the things that I felt necessary. Below you see a screenshot of all the layers that I made. After that I have made individual screenshots of every correction that I put into the layers.




This is what I did in the "Selective Color" layer, and below that is that mask that I used for it.






Only a minor adjustment in the "Color Balance" layer.




I made two bigger corrections in the "Selective Color Options" layer.






In a "Curves" layer I picked the black and white points (see aim-mark 1 and aim-mark 2 behind the cockpit and main gear).



After all these adjustments were ready I flattened the image, set the profile to sRGB, resized to 900x600, sharpened 70% at 0,4 and cut and pasted the whole image into its black-and-white frame. This was the final result:



Well, I hope this explains what I did. I'm very curious what other people like to see different...... More or less from an individual color ? More contrast ? Lighter or darker ? Or any other remark ? Please let me know what you think or feel about my adjustments, as I like to learn too !

Hope to read a lot more remarks soon.

Cheers,
Iwan

[DJdeRidder]

I used Iwan's final JPEG to change 3 things (all in Lightroom):

- I removed the blue color cast with the HSL targeted adjustment tool (I desaturated the blue colors).

- To avoid clipping (especially in the nose section) I used the recovery tool.

- To remove some of the red cast over the airframe I used the adjustment brush (desaturation).

I could have done some better as I only spent two or three minutes on it and didn't use the original RAW file.

The result:


Just a matter of taste I guess, but I would like it better without the blue/red color cast.

[Joost van Doorn]

Nice editing, but the right side is a bit too bright for me.

I personally prefer something like this, a bit yellow but not too much:

[Polecat]

Agree with you Joost.
Though technically I see Iwan's point, and I admit to editing them a bit too blue/cold as well sometimes. For me it's not about trying to make a night shot look as close to a daytime shot as you can get it. For me it should still have a totally different atmosphere, so indeed a bit dark and yellow... A good test is looking through your eyelashes, some shots look like daylight shots, you can almost imagine the sun shining.. For my personal taste than it's gone to far..

[Iwan Bogels]

I used Iwan's final JPEG to change 3 things (all in Lightroom):

- I removed the blue color cast with the HSL targeted adjustment tool (I desaturated the blue colors).

- To avoid clipping (especially in the nose section) I used the recovery tool.

- To remove some of the red cast over the airframe I used the adjustment brush (desaturation).

I could have done some better as I only spent two or three minutes on it and didn't use the original RAW file.

Thanks DJ,

It´s nice to see what you did, and I like the result.

Cheers,
Iwan