TIFF and ivory dress

<p>I recently did a Bridal Shoot and it turn out great! So, I thought. I didn't realise I switched from RAW to TIFF about 1/3 way into the shoot by mistake. I shot with +1/3 exposure compensation, manual, spot metering with a D300. The Bride wore a lacy, ivory dress. Since I usually shoot in RAW, I was unable to 'tweek' the TIFF images for exposure, etc. How is TIFF different from RAW & JPEG? Should I have left the exposure compensation to 0 for the ivory dress? Most of the images were fine but many dress details were blown out. What can I do?</p>

<p>Here's a sample. Post processed in CS2. I'm not sure why her hair has a bluish cast to it. Any tip is appreciated! Thanks!</p>

<p>I don't think photo.net will display .bmp images inline. You need to convert to jpeg in order for your image attachment to show up.</p>

<p>Here's another version SOOC in jpeg.</p><div></div>

<p>I do not have a program on my home laptop for bmp conversion.</p>

<p>The D300 has only RAW or JPEG as file formats, so it sounds like you made an image in RAW, and then converted it to a TIFF image, which is what you are viewing. You can re-open the RAW file in your RAW processor (PS, Lightroom, Aperture etc, or Nikon's software) and do some highlight recovery, to see if you can restore your highlight tones.<br>

Hope this helps.</p>

<p>I thought I did that too, so I looked at my camera and there IS a TIFF setting just after RAW under QUAL.</p>

<p>The blue cast in the hair is probably caused by a mix of hair coloring, hair spray and reflection of the sky and also possibly light diffraction.</p>

<p>Download Irfanview, it can convert almost any format.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Chris, this shot is not lost. I tweaked it in PS and was able to produce a decent image in about 2 minutes.</p><div></div>

<p>and here is my attempt, minus the plastic skin effect in the post above...:-)</p>

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<p>Regardless of the technical issue with your shot, it is in my opinion a very good one! The bride will surely love it! Well done.</p>

<p>You probably will never truly restore the dress, so I'd suggest concentrating on the face and hair to draw attention away from that exposure flaw.</p>

<p>Select the hair and desaturate the blue ... then use the color balance tool to restore red and yellows while slightly deepening the exposure.</p>

<p>Something like this:</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Oops!</p>

<p>Sorry, here's the jpg ...</p><div></div>

<p>The "Fixed" examples certainly help. But, your most important part, the eyes, are dark as charcoal.<br>

I think your white balance was not set properly when you went to TIFF. WB matters in TIFF, not in RAW. The big difference in TIFF vs. .jpg is TIFF does not compress the file when saved.<br>

You're exposure just isn't correct. When something is blown out in digital there is no information within the pixels to work with in editing, resulting in a lot of work ahead</p>

<p>Tiff can be both 8 or 16 bit, but if I'm not mistaken the 300D supports only 8 bit, so indeed it seems you've lost the detail in the highlights for good. Personally I would always expose on the dark side: a dark area is usually less of a problem than a blown-out area, besides: detail in dark areas can usually be brought out again with some post-processing while blown-out areas are mostly 'beyond repair'.<br />

Let me be more precise: what struck me is that whereas the OP was mainly concerned with the loss of detail of the dress, what I see in the 3 versions is that the face and skin are heavily altered and not for the better: the 1st version indeed, as you noticed, has a too 'plasticky' feel. Your version introduces several what seem to be oversaturation artefacts: for instance in her left (for the viewer) armpit and arm and the green foliage which now attracts too much attention. The problem with darkening is that it accentuates the blown-out parts, because they will hardly change and remain almost white, which is most noticeable in her shoulder. My adjustments also has its flaws (loss of detail in her dark hair, for instance), but I didn't want to spend too much time.</p><div></div>

I was not fixing this photos to present it to the bride. I was only showing that the photos could be restored and some of the highlights could be saved. I spent a few minutes and added a liquify and a few actions that only tweaked to photo a little. I did not ask you to critique it. If you want to critique my work, I have a website you your more then welcome to take a look at. As for my original post, I believe I said decent and not perfect. I was not going for perfect. Therefore, I think both of you should concentrate on helping Chris out and not those who are only trying to help him out.</p>

<p>Chris, you mentioned you were working on a laptop.</p>

<p>I'm not sure whether this is where you do your image editing, but if it is, be aware that most laptop LCD displays perform poorly with the highest value tones, often washing out significant detail. Your image file may have more detail remaining than you suspect, as the edits demonstrate. Also, be aware that when adjusting for these values on a laptop screen, it's possible to overcompensate.</p>

<p>My apologies if this does not apply to your workflow--I thought it was worth mentioning, just in case. Lovely portrait, by the way. Rest assured most brides will be far less critical of such issues of craft than you are... but they DO love to see the details of their dresses.</p>

<p>THANKS to everyone who offered some light in the end of the tunnel! David: I was using my laptop at home when I posted the question. The only copy I had was a SOOC shot I downloaded from my camera. I edit everything on the desktop at work and the CS2 is in that computer.<br>

I usually put WB on AUTO and expose for the face and 'thought' I could tweek the WB if needed (in RAW).</p>

<p>. . . . ."I shot with +1/3 exposure compensation,"</p>

<p>You never shot +1/3 exp. com. except snowy scenery or to mach white, 90%. in the composition. A 0 comp or -1/3 better most of the time as +1/3. Even with a film/slide. Slight under exposure is easily corrected then over exposure.</p>

<p>Thanks Bela..I'll keep that in mind the next time.</p>

<p>I would do something like this with the shot.</p><div></div>

<p>Generally I don't like post processing, at least since I can see it. Theo Jacobs Editing seems very well done, but is not definitive, as he states: "My adjustments also has its flaws".<br>

Stuart Moxham had a brilliant photographic idea, crop out all flaws and an interesting picture comes out! Slight tilting adds more interest to the image, so keep this, regards, Roberto!</p>

 

<p>Good work Stuart.</p>

<p>Theo, your fix looks just as bad as any before it ... LOL!</p>

<p>Look, its pretty close to impossible to fix a sub 1 meg jpg lifted off the internet. That Stuart did what he did is close to amazing. </p>

<p>It's all in the spirit of trying to help a badly exposed image.</p>

<p>What is interesting is the volume of shots appearing on this forum that are poorly shot, thus in search of a "magic bullet" cure.</p>

<p>The cure is to learn from your mistakes and move on to shooting more thoughtfully and carefully. It's part of learning the craft, and that learning should be less about fixing something after the fact, and more about getting it right in the first place.</p>

<p>Thanks Mark for the compliments. I have to agree that looking for the magic bullet to fix shots is not the best way to go about this kind of work. It really is much easier to get shots right first so any photoshop work is that may be done is to enhance an already good shot. I honestly feel that many photographers could learn a lot from shooting JPGs and getting them right in the camera and then shoot RAW for the fine controls that RAW offers. I am not saying that they should shoot JPGs at weddings but when they shoot for themselves they could try JPGs or at least be aware of how much they have to process a RAW file to make it look good. Now I know that some photogs will always expose well to the right and recover highlights or expose to preserve highlights and adjust while RAW processing but it should be a choice based on knowing their equipment and what it can and cannot do rather than just fixing bad exposures or other problems.</p>