Spanish Elegance in California
- Thread starter Jeffrey
- Start date
Jeffrey, this is a gorgeous image, I really like it.
AlanLichty
Moderator
Stunning view with a really nice sunrise. The stark white of the courthouse walls really makes it stand out in this light.
Very nice Jeffrey. Great sky and light on the building.
Jim Dockery
Well-Known Member
Nice work.
Douglas Sherman
Staff
Exceptional image, Jeffrey. Congratulations on the Daily Featured Post.
Jeffrey
Well-Known Member
Thank you all for the kind comments.
I've had an interesting experience with this image. First look, and I was very excited, and felt successful about the whole event of getting out, flying, capturing and processing. But I was never happy about the image quality. You can't see this in the jpeg, but there is a lot of noise and artifacts in the hi rez file and my print was not up to my standards. Couldn't stop thinking about it and why it wasn't better. Today I went back to the RAW and processed it very differently. First, I needed to find why it was so rough at full rez. I had some ideas about what might have caused that, and converted the RAW in a new way. That made a huge difference in the IQ. Even though I could not see a lot of detail in the RAW (before a lot of shadow recovery, when it was much darker) I thought there might be a lot of the noise in the original capture, and that it did not come about by the extensive post processing. I've removed noise from many images after I am done with them, always thinking that it came from abundant processing. And also because my Canon DSLR is pretty clean. But the camera on the drone is not clean at all in low light situations. So I maxed the noise reduction in ACR. WOW. The image was so clean now that I felt like I was working on a Canon file! I didn't have to fight with the damn thing and overprocess it to try to clean it up. It needed no NR afterwards. And fewer layers. I fixed a few other things that were bothering me such as correcting for verticals in the clock tower and some color correction overall.
Here is the new final result:
I've had an interesting experience with this image. First look, and I was very excited, and felt successful about the whole event of getting out, flying, capturing and processing. But I was never happy about the image quality. You can't see this in the jpeg, but there is a lot of noise and artifacts in the hi rez file and my print was not up to my standards. Couldn't stop thinking about it and why it wasn't better. Today I went back to the RAW and processed it very differently. First, I needed to find why it was so rough at full rez. I had some ideas about what might have caused that, and converted the RAW in a new way. That made a huge difference in the IQ. Even though I could not see a lot of detail in the RAW (before a lot of shadow recovery, when it was much darker) I thought there might be a lot of the noise in the original capture, and that it did not come about by the extensive post processing. I've removed noise from many images after I am done with them, always thinking that it came from abundant processing. And also because my Canon DSLR is pretty clean. But the camera on the drone is not clean at all in low light situations. So I maxed the noise reduction in ACR. WOW. The image was so clean now that I felt like I was working on a Canon file! I didn't have to fight with the damn thing and overprocess it to try to clean it up. It needed no NR afterwards. And fewer layers. I fixed a few other things that were bothering me such as correcting for verticals in the clock tower and some color correction overall.
Here is the new final result:
Wow, this is even better than an already great image. But I certainly understand how web size can hide for many flaws.
Jeffrey
Well-Known Member
Thanks Ben. That's the beauty of internet photo sites. I have more than a few images that do not have the quality to print but sure make fine looking jpegs.