Peter Kesternich - Editing advice

[Peter Kesternich]

Hey everybody...
I got back from Málaga a few weeks ago, after the first spotting days with my new Canon 90D (had a Sony a58 before).
I find it difficult to get the histogram settings right, especially, when there is only sky and a plane in it. I have attached an example. Any help to edit this one into an uploadable picture will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Peter

[dlowwa]

Hey everybody...
I got back from Málaga a few weeks ago, after the first spotting days with my new Canon 90D (had a Sony a58 before).
I find it difficult to get the histogram settings right, especially, when there is only sky and a plane in it. I have attached an example. Any help to edit this one into an uploadable picture will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Peter

A touch dark/flat, but only needs a minor adjustment I think.

[Peter Kesternich]

Hmmmmmm... okayyyy... Well - here is what I would normally do with it in Photoshop Elements 17, workflow wise:
(0. Get rid of dust - not necessary in this one)
1. Adjust the color. (Ctrl + Ü ... I'm using a German keyboard)
2. Adjust the histogram (Ctrl + L)... and here is when it gets tricky... My experience has been that j.net will reject any picture with a histogram that has flat parts at either end of the scale as in example 1). But if I adjust the pointers accordingly, the picture doesn't look natural anymore (example 2). Also, if I call up the histogram function again (example 3), there is still a long flat area on the left side of the histogram and pictures like this invariably get rejected...

Look at the histogram to see what I mean:













If after that I try to adjust saturation or highs and lows or brightness and contrast it only gets worse... I get either editing halos or if I tweak the settings so that the histogram looks right with no flat areas at either end of the spectrum, the picture has a completely unnatural look. I am pretty certain that I am doing something wrong, but I have no idea what.
Any help will be greatly appreciated...

[dlowwa]

Hmmmmmm... okayyyy... Well - here is what I would normally do with it in Photoshop Elements 17, workflow wise:
(0. Get rid of dust - not necessary in this one)
1. Adjust the color. (Ctrl + Ü ... I'm using a German keyboard)
2. Adjust the histogram (Ctrl + L)... and here is when it gets tricky... My experience has been that j.net will reject any picture with a histogram that has flat parts at either end of the scale as in example 1). But if I adjust the pointers accordingly, the picture doesn't look natural anymore (example 2). Also, if I call up the histogram function again (example 3), there is still a long flat area on the left side of the histogram and pictures like this invariably get rejected...

Look at the histogram to see what I mean:













If after that I try to adjust saturation or highs and lows or brightness and contrast it only gets worse... I get either editing halos or if I tweak the settings so that the histogram looks right with no flat areas at either end of the spectrum, the picture has a completely unnatural look. I am pretty certain that I am doing something wrong, but I have no idea what.
Any help will be greatly appreciated...

'j.net' hasn't existed for some years now

Of those examples, the first was the best, but I assume that's the same as your original post. To be honest, I don't use the histogram very much when screening (only to check suspected under/overexposed images, almost never for contrast), and I doubt many others do either since it would be too time consuming. I'd only rely on it for checking contrast for JP if the ol' 'eye test' isn't working.

[Peter Kesternich]

'j.net' hasn't existed for some years now

Old habits... *lol...

Of those examples, the first was the best, but I assume that's the same as your original post. To be honest, I don't use the histogram very much when screening (only to check suspected under/overexposed images, almost never for contrast), and I doubt many others do either since it would be too time consuming. I'd only rely on it for checking contrast for JP if the ol' 'eye test' isn't working.

Well, I'll try to rely more on my eyes then and see what happens... But what about the histogram function? Should I skip that from my workflow altogether and stick with using highs and lows or brightness and contrast?
In any case: thanks for the advice.

[dlowwa]

Well, I'll try to rely more on my eyes then and see what happens... But what about the histogram function? Should I skip that from my workflow altogether and stick with using highs and lows or brightness and contrast?

Again, in my case I find the histogram most useful for detecting under/overexposed areas in the image rather than overall contrast, but that's just me. Others might be able to use to determine contrast effectively, but I've rarely found that to be the case for myself. But again, that's just my opinion.