1/26/2004 8:48:18 AM

Thanks very much, Jessica. This is near Mazama Lake, more like a little pond just under Table Mountain in the North Cascades, near the much more photographically famous Mount Shuksan. It is indeed a gorgeous place. We did an overnight hike on this trip and, in spite of the millions of mosquitoes, we thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Thanks again for commenting.

1/28/2004 12:11:30 AM

I should also note that this is actually a composite of two images.

Because the tones in this scene ranged in contrast too much - with the land and lake being relatively dark and the sky being very bright - there was no way (short of using a graduated neutral density filter) for me to accurately capture all the tones.

As I did not have a graduated ND filter with me, I exposed one photo for the sky and then took another photo, exposing for the land. Then, back in the comfort of my home, I combined the two images in Photoshop.

2/11/2004 4:57:23 PM

I think using photo shop to make an image, is basicly cheating and teaching people to do so in photo shop is also not very ethical.

2/18/2004 7:12:20 AM

Jim, I think you are doing a fine job! Photoshop is wonderful!
It's so kind of you to work so hard for these images. There is nothing immoral about perfecting the beauty that you have seen first hand.
I love this website. I have learned more here than all of the photography books that I have read!
Jessica

2/20/2004 7:27:05 PM

Thanks Jessica. I appreciate the kind feedback.

I too love Photoshop and all the perfecting it allows us to do.

Thanks again!

2/21/2004 11:03:33 AM

I happened upon this picture and read the comments from RJ and felt I had to add my own thoughts. While I would agree, on one hand, I feel like some of what RJ said was correct, on the other hand, You mastered the picture the way your mind saw it. The reason Ansel Adams' pictures are so wonderful to look at isn't because that's what he captured on film, his pictures are so wonderful because he was able to master the darkroom. To achive the pictures he produced, he dodged and burned them to the limit and added filters in the exposure from negative to paper to get what his eye saw. To that extent, what was done to achive the range in this photo, is exactly the same.

3/5/2004 9:29:50 PM

Jim - the beauty of nature cannot be minimized by the manner in which we "record" it! This is a lovely capture you have made. Having spent literally years studying such digital programs as Adobe Photoshop, I have no doubt that such digital skills are very comparable to any "editing" done - either in-camera or in the dark room! Any suggestion to the contrary would seem to indicate lack of personal experience with such things. If I were a painter, and the sky was "flat grey" on this day, would I be "cheating" to instead paint a lovely blue sky in? I think not.
With kind regards, Tobias.

3/24/2004 1:44:52 PM

Jim,
In respons to what RJB said about using PS as a correction tool.... I really think that it is not fear to say that.
Afterall that is what PS is all about!
So according to him every other thing (for instance the use of a ND filter) you could have used to solve your exposure problem would have been like cheating ? I think that it is not the media ( camera, photoshop, darkroom, or any of these combined ) but is the result that matter!
I love what I see and that is waìhat matters to me !
besides you have been very honest saying that and I really like that .Extra bonus for the truth.

4/16/2004 11:57:18 PM

With all due respect to the person who said it, the cry of "that's cheating" is bunk. The fact is, digital sensors capture FAR less dynamic range than film. If this had been on negative film, you wouldn't have had to do a thing. But since it's digital, we all need all the help we can get, because digital really sucks for dynamic range.

Besides, nobody complains when analog photographers use a Contrast Mask--a processing method specifically intending (in most cases) to to narrow the dynamic range by pulling out dark and light details. You can do the exact same thing in Photoshop.

Now if you had edited in a giraffe or an extra mountain, then I too would be yelling, "that's cheating".

BTW, I've used the method you used often, but I've discovered a much easier way to get the same result. It's better in one way because you don't get the transition problems where one blends into the other. But it's not as good in another way, because you do get a little more noise (but not anywhere near as much as, say, doing Equalize on a dark photo). This is my own "patented invention":
• Open original.
• Perform an "Auto-Contrast".
• Copy background layer.
• Copy background layer again (for three total layers).
• Select top layer.
• Desaturate colors of this layer to B&W.
• Invert colors (for a negative image).
• Set layer type to "SOFT LIGHT".
• Set layer opacity to 75%, or whatever looks best (don't worry about too much color saturation yet).
• Flatten top layer into layer below.
• Set new top layer property to "Luminosity".
• Flatten into the bottom layer.
• There may be too much color saturation. Back it off a bit.

Here's how to do a traditional Contrast Mask, which gives very different results (sometimes better, usually worse, than the above method):
• Open original.
• Perform an "Auto-Contrast".
• Copy background layer.
• Copy background layer again (for three total layers).
• Select top layer.
• Desaturate colors of this layer to B&W.
• Invert colors (for a negative image).
• Set layer type to "Overlay".
• Open Gaussian Blur dialog, set to an amount that works well. Start at 90 (yes 90), and try higher & lower. Hit OK.
• Flatten top layer into layer below.
• Set new top layer property to "Luminosity".
• Flatten into the bottom layer.
• There may be too much color saturation. Back it off a bit.

To get even better results with both methods, when the instructions stay "Desaturate colors", do this instead: insert one layer of a flattened 50/50 mix of a regular desaturated image, and the Brightness channel from a LAB mode conversion. Using either one alone produces variously odd, noisy, or less than ideal results. A 50/50 mix is just about perfect. You might make a Photoshop Action to do this quickly.

Hope this helps!
Jim

6/8/2004 12:15:47 PM