alan_cox3

Frans, if you are on the Windows platform and haven't done a lot on the computer since the original was over-written, there are a couple of potential solutions. Both are long shots and a little messy. But if it was really important to me I'd try first looking in the Recycle Bin. If not there then I'd try using a program like "Recuva" -- a free utility that can locate and in some cases recover "deleted" files. (This could take quite a while and you'd have to sort through a lot of other trash.) The success of both of these depend on how much you've used the computer since the errant over-writing.

Irregardless of what folks at the "Adobe Community" agree is the "correct answer", there is no debating whether LR wrote into several years worth of my raw files.. So my own personal choice is to continue marking all my raw files as R/O. My files, my choice, YMMV.

This is not the first time Adobe has written into Raw files. They are not truly read only unless you use some command/tool to mark them that way. Having learned my lesson about Adobe software quality in the past, I ALWAYS import my camera raw files manually and immediately mark them as R/O before I ever let Adobe even look at them.

Just as an aside, the reason heat is not an issue for me is that I mount with PMA and not a heat press. But good point. The heating and cooling I suppose could cause microscopic cracking or separation of the lacquer layer. Good luck.

After. The print will be flatter during spraying, so easier to see exactly what you are doing.

I usually place prints on a 30 degree angle. I use a light a few feet in front of me that reflects off the print. It gives the best view of where and how much I'm spraying. As Ed has said, spray lightly, using overlapping passes. Start and end past the edges. Use multiple coats, turning 90 degrees each time. I use 2-4 coats, depending on the effect I want (and how brave I'm feeling). ALSO, it's VERY important to let the prints fully cure for a day or two BEFORE spraying. Otherwise you will get fogging from within the blacks due to out-gassing.

<p>Hi Kier,<br> I suppose it's possible that in doing ETTR you over-saturated the blue channel. It's just a possibility. It's not quite as common as blowing out the red channel on flowers, etc. But I've still seen it happen. Were you using an RGB histogram when setting ETTR? Gray histograms will not alert you to the potential problem. Check the blue values in the brightest areas. If there are none close to max value, you are OK.<br> When doing ETTR, over-saturating a few specular highlight pixels in detail areas will generally be OK. Doing so in larger smooth areas will quickly show up as banding/mottling.<br> Some folks I know actually have a style setting that increases the contrast when doing ETTR. That way the blinkies are an "early warning" for how close you are getting. (Blinkies are determined by the JPEG setting, ie the style combination.)</p>

<p>Bill, I just replaced my old laptop this year with an Asus Zenbook. It very light, and has a 3800x1800 resolution 13.3 screen. I calibrated it with my ColorMunki Photo, and use it for Photo presentations, and while travelling. If you haven't tried one, you might give them a look.</p>

<p>Also be aware that if you do go to psb files, that Lightroom will not even acknowledge that they exist. It's stupid I know, but it seems that the code shared with PS does not support them, so LR just pretends they aren't there. That's a big potential problem if you start out needing just psd files, and then save as psb's as they grow later. So be sure you are working with the latest version, which by then is the psb! Otherwise you will waste a lot of time working with an old version later. (Don't ask how I learned this!) Thank you Adobe! </p>

<p>Tim, OP posted the original image and stated that one option was to reshoot it. But he had reservations about it looking the same or as good. As several have stated, what he has should scale up fine. I was just encouraging him to use the opportunity to print something as large as 40 x 50 to do even better.</p>

<p>There are advanced techniques that can recover the image to eventually be "acceptable". However, you know already there is an upper limit on the resulting quality of what you are putting out there. While I too love technical challenges like this, my advice is that it's not a problem that needs to be solved.</p> <p>I suggest spending the same time and effort reconstructing it, and it has the potential to be even better than your original raw, and outright AWESOME! That should be your goal in this case -- not taking on restoration of a jpeg. Don't mess around just attempting to "get on base", when you have the potential to knock it over the fence! Don't sell yourself short. (You ask for our advice. That's mine.)</p>

<p>I can't imagine that any of us that used to skip every other upgrade are happy with the current marketing model. To attempt to convince us that we should be happy with it, since others like the idea, is rather pointless. (My one and ONLY comment on the subject.)</p>

<p>I think at this point we are saying the same thing. No problem in original data or high quality output. Potential problem with down-sampling to low bit per pixel output. Obviously if you are not having such a problem, then good. Best regards.</p>

<p>The potential trap is in the handling of the round-off errors during the down-sampling process. As long as all the errors are distributed to neighboring pixels during the process it's OK. But if it's not done well, or the emphasis is on speed over quality, then the errors are discarded as in display algorithms and hardware conversions. That's when the banding shows up. It depends on the implementation, and most are much better than they used to be. Obviously your images have all been faithfully down-sampled.</p> <p>Note that I was just alerting to a potential issue, and attempting to explain why adding noise sometimes helps a banding problem. </p>

<p>The problem in the skies isn't just clipping. By being almost perfectly smooth, it's a waiting trap when collapsing it's values down to just a few. ETTR and low ISOs, while helping shadows, also takes a slight bit of noise out of the skies. It's all OK in the original capture, but in collapsed jpegs (and screen displays) -- not so much.</p>