How do I make My Images "Pop" like Zolton Fogarasi's?

[James G. Dainis]

What you are seeing in Marc's photo of the bride is good or high accutance, a seperation of tones in the imge.

 

<p> <center><img src=http://www.geocities.com/dainisjg/accutance.jpg></center><P>

Note the black area/line between the bride's shoulder and the back of the jacket in the background. Note how the top of that jacket has a white area that also goes around the bride's chin seperating the chin from the jacket just as the top of the jacket is seperated from the further background. Without that, one area of tone would not be as seperated from another area of tone. It is that which gives the POP. A sharp lens is nice, but one that can render that accutance is better.

[James G. Dainis]

A photo with high accutance will look sharper than one without, even though lp/mm is the same or even less.<BR>

 

<center><img src=http://www.geocities.com/dainisjg/accutan_t.gif>

</center><BR>

The T on the right is a copy of the T on the left. A thin black line has been drawn around the T on the right making it look sharper and POP from the background. That is accutance.

[fotografz]

The best tip I can give you Kari, is to steal the Nike theme line ... "Just Do It". The second

best tip is to buy more CF cards.

 

RAW help: Open a promising image shot in RAW. Make sure you have selected the

advanced tab. If you know how to get to your RAW converter preferences, you can select to

not sharpen. Now to start ... Always white balance first. DON"T use the Exposure slider

control to lift a dark image, start by slightly lowering the contrast and using the Brightness

slider control to lift dark images with. If they get to flat looking then use the Shadow slider

to add back contrast. Add saturation to taste. But this is just for starters. How you shoot

will determine your approach, so you'll have to just play around until you start

understanding how the different control sliders effect the images.

[cjfraser]

Kari,

 

I started writing a reply to you, but while I was checking a link, my browser did something weird and my reply vanished. Ugh!

 

Anyway, the gist of the original reply was: Shoot raw. Buy more CF cards. Learn ACR or another raw conversion program, which will give you precise control over all aspects of tone and contrast, and try out a range of different sharpening recipes. You will be amazed by how you can make your photos pop just through the steps Marc describes and by manipulating the tone curve in ACR.

 

You mentioned being concerned about oversharpening. An image is oversharpened when the bright or dark halos around edges are noticeable. My crudely tweaked versions of your photos, for instance, are both oversharpened -- in the ring photo, see how there's an obvious bright halo around the top edge of the rightmost ring? That's a mark of oversharpening. Ideally, that band of brightness would be just barely visible -- then it'd enhance accutance in the way that James illustrated in his magnified crop from Marc's photo. (Good post, James.) However, if I'd started with high-res, 16-bit files of your images, the same processing steps probably would've produced images that looked about right.

 

One further point about sharpening: The right amount is to have the sharpening halos be just barely visible when you scrutinize them. Since what counts as barely visible will vary with the size of the image, different size output images will call for different amounts of output sharpening.

 

You asked for websites or instructions. You'll find a lot of useful information through the "tutorials" page of the Cambridge site I mentioned earlier. Also, here's a tutorial on using Adobe Camera Raw:

 

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/adobe-camera-raw-cookbook.html

 

There are other useful tutorials in the Archives section of this site, too.

 

On sharpening, also have a look at this article by Bruce Fraser:

 

www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357-1.html

 

Thom Hogan's page is also good: www.bythom.com/sharpening.htm

 

If you're learning ACR, try reading Adobe Camera Raw for Digital Photographers Only, by Rob Sheppard. Many people also recommend Real World Camera Raw, by Bruce Fraser. I've read both and find the first more informative. But it's good to have a look at both.

 

Both of these writers' raw conversion recipes are slightly different from the one Marc just posted, so now I want to experiment a bit with his. Because of the way the controls in ACR interact with each other, different experts may have different steps for adjusting their photos, and different photos may call for different treatment. The key is to experiment and to understand how each control affects the image.

 

Good luck! Hope this helps.

 

Chris

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Marc's point about custom profiles for ACR is very valid: I have a custom setup for my 5D files with custom values for almost every single thing that you could change including the curve. The 5D profile is far far different than the one I set up for my 1Ds and both are light years away from the one I used with the 10D. As Marc says, I right click the files and select the apropriate profile (I have it set up as default at the moment) and once I've changed the colour, assuming the exposure is fine, I have nothing more to do in RAW, period.

[James G. Dainis]

Chris,<BR>

 

Fantastic information. Photographer's have long known how to increase accutance in the wet darkroom using high accutance developers. It is good to know it can be done in the digital darkrooms as well. In

<a href=http://www.photo.net/photo/3841875>Marc's photo</a>, one can easily see the light halo running down the groom's sleeve against the floor. (If one looks for it.)The halo is also on the top of the bride's head and on the side of the groom's head above the ear, as well in other places. That can be more easily seen if one increases the size of the photo. <BR>

I shall brave Mary's wrath by posting one more image. (I am well aware of the one person one image rule).<P>

 

<center><img src=http://www.geocities.com/dainisjg/accutance_both.jpg></center>

One can see the black halo around the grooms fingers on the left. Accutance appears when there is a greater difference in tone between two regions. On the right, there is the black line between the top of the groom's shoulder and the dress in the background. Then it disappears as the tone of the shoulder and the background are similar and reappears again as the top of the shoulder is again aganst a white object in the background.

<P>Marc,

<BR>You did one fantastic job with that photo, technically and compositionally. Te salut.

[kari douma]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Marc, Chris and James and Ben. You guys are truely wonderful. It looks like I have a new project for the next few months. Last winter I was learning digital in general (white balance, pixels, phtotoshop) now I think this winter I'll be concentrating on learning RAW better. It seams a little overwhelming to me, but so did everything else that I can do now! So, I must just plunge in and move forward... one step at a time. I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to help me! Photo.net is the best! Ok, my head is spinning now....

[kari douma]

Ok, I just thought of something else. It makes sence to me to see the black outlining the subject. I understand how that would make the photo "pop". But, how do you achieve that? Is this what you are explaining to me all along? Is is achieved by shooting raw and learning how to properly use the raw converter and properly sharpen? Or is acheived before the image is in the computer, with perfect lighting and exposure?

[wim_van_velzen]

What exactly can one do to raise the accutance? I suppose it has to do with the general quality of the camera's sensor and the lenses, but what about raw conversion and photoshop?

<p>

<a href="http://www.fotografiewimvanvelzen.nl">Wim</a>

[thomas_sullivan]

"...DON"T use the Exposure slider control to lift a dark image, start by slightly lowering the contrast and using the Brightness slider control to lift dark images with. If they get to flat looking then use the Shadow slider to add back contrast. Add saturation to taste..." - Marc Williams

 

...that is awesome, works much better than starting with the exposure slider for backlit images that need fill light added in CS2. Avoids that digital luminance noise problem nicely. Thanks.

[cjfraser]

Wim: Acutance refers to how suddenly information transfers at an edge -- how clearly defined the edges in an image are. (BTW, we were all misspelling the word above -- there's only one 'c'.) It is determined partly by the quality of your lens and partly by post-processing. Increasing acutance is precisely what sharpening does. See this page: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm

 

(By the way, along with Luminous Landscape and the Photo.net archives, Cambridge in Colour is the most informative photography website I've found. Highly recommended. And Sean McHugh has some superb photos posted there.)

 

Kari: The short answer is, Yes that's what we've been getting at all along. The longer answer is -- and here I welcome one of the pros to correct me or rephrase -- basically, "pop" comes from contrast. But contrast can be thought of as obtaining at various levels. Sharpening enhances contrast at the micro level -- the level of very small-scale edges. Local contrast enhancement -- unsharp mask with low amount and high radius -- increases contrast at the level of transitions between small-to-medium sized light and dark areas of an image. Then at a higher level, there's the overall contrast between different parts of an image, controlled by how you fix your black and white points and the shape of your tone curve. All three levels are important. All three are affected by post-processing and by lens quality, but also, and most fundamentally, by the quality and direction of light and the relation of a subject to its background. That's why, when you asked about "pop," the first response of Nadine, Marc, David and other experienced pros was to talk about lighting, appropriate background, and other basics of photographic technique.

[gaetano catelli]

"...DON"T use the Exposure slider control to lift a dark image, start by slightly lowering the contrast and using the Brightness slider control to lift dark images with. If they get to flat looking then use the Shadow slider to add back contrast."

<p>

i, also, read that sentence with great interest. however, later in this thread, this link -- <a href="http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/adobe-camera-raw-cookbook.html">http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/adobe-camera-raw-cookbook.html</a> -- states that what ACR calls "Exposure" corresponds to the right slider in levels, "Shadow" corresponds to left slider, and "Brightness" corresponds to the middle slider. if that's the case, then it would seem that the adjustments should be made in the order they appear running top to bottom in the ACR interface: 1st set the white point with Exposure, then set the black point with Shadow, then set the midpoint with Brightness.

<p>

since i can't seem to discipline myself to automate (instead of slaving over every file individually), i'll have plenty of opportunity to employ trial and error :-(

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Using local contrast enhancement can do nasty things to faces especially in colour, I've been leaning towards a less harsh sharpening enviroment where the photos look more film like and less 'USM harsh'. On the other side I want to preserve a good level of sharpness. Lens Blur in Smart sharpen, but with a higher value than I would use in USM is a good compromise that I've found.

 

I don't know the science of it but use the brightness slider to lighten and the exposure slider to darken. If you need to bring a photo up but preserve the highlights then darken with the exposure and bring back with the brightness. Look at the difference in the histogram if you don't believe me! The curves tool in ACR has to be used very subtly and as an addition to the sliders not instead of them but for subtle changes to the shadows/highlights it's extremely useful.

 

Getting the WB right in RAW can make a huge difference to both the histogram and your peace of mind. An over warm picture not only doesn't look right, but the histogram is wrong too. Get it back to the right WB and suddenly your highlights arn't blown any more. I use a Whibal and am in the process of buying another as backup, that's how important I think it is.

 

The vignetting tool if used carefully can be useful in pulling the attention into the subject of the photo by getting rid of the distractions, it's there if you want to experiment...

 

When your'e shooting loads of photos and don't want to be stuck at the computer for hours and hours then it's important to get the easiest and smoothest workflow, especially for RAW. For me, if I have to leave ACR to do something to a photo then in all likelyhood I've screwed up. Leaving ACR makes a big dent in my workflow and interupts the whole thing. I have actions that change my RAW files to sharpened hi res jpgs, actions that turn those into cropped 7X5" proofs, or even from RAWE to proof directly, actions to do the same but adding SF and only the B&W action that needs any input from me.

[thomas_sullivan]

gaetano catelli - yeah, normally I do that, but whenever I had a backlit subject that I didn't correctly fill the subject's face with flash, added fill, or just didn't compensate enough with the basic exposure, I have been fiddling around in ACR trying to get a decent balance between the face, the background and the digital noise that eventually occurs. Marc's method got me to optimum much faster than the normal method. I haven't tried it yet on a completely underexposed image, as I tend to use the histogram to set up exposure in cam to max out the exposure to the right with out blow out, and delete the pre-attempts...so I can't comment on that. My main problem with "underexposure" is guessing which one of the middle peaks in the histogram is the person, so sometimes I guess wrong and end up maybe 1 stop darker on the face than I really wanted. Marc's method seems to be the fastest correction in ACR that I found yet.....ie. gets me to the optimum settings quickest. doing the white set first in those cases has always caused me to have to fiddle a whole lot.

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Thomas, firstly with a calibrated monitor using the histogram should be 'less' important as you can get it to look right whatever the histogram says, secondly if you check the highlights and shadows boxes on the top you can get a good idea of where the trouble areas are, if you can't judge on screen.

[thomas_sullivan]

ben...I was talking about the histogram in the camera. Now there would be a nice tool in the camera's histogram view...a little cursor you could point on the pic and it showed on the histogram where is was.........yeah......yo Canon you listenning?

 

in photoshop, ACR or otherwise, you are correct, there are tons of tools available AND the monitor (properly calibrated) is a good visual "see" of it. The LCD in the camera is useless for tonal/exposure decisions.

[kim long- cincinnati, ohio]

When processing digital, unsharp masking does a lot to affect the look you're going for.

 

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/unsharp-mask.htm

[fotografz]

"I don't know the science of it but use the brightness slider to lighten and the exposure slider

to darken."

 

Bingo ! Exactly.

 

A great tutorial for morons like me is Russell Brown's QT movies. Slightly entertaining, and

really informative. Takes you through ARC step-by-step as if you knew nothing, which a

really good thing IMO.

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Thomas, I'd give a lot for a histogram like that! Didn't the Kodak 14n have a feature like that? Another problem that faces being pretty low contrast do not peak, they are often almsot a flat line along the bottom which can confuse issues. I've found that it's best to keep the histogram as far right as possible, when white shirts are a touch from blowing out, the faces should be OK.

[ray_pulley]

I too could not resist fiddling with one of your images.

 

Your vision is good, and as noted above, the detail in your whites is excellent. I can see what you are seeing, however, as many images seem rather flat.

 

I think what has been written above is all good advice, but like you I often wondered how to get that polished look that stands out or pops off the screen.

 

I expected to be able to do so in camera, and I was always disappointed in my results. While there is no substitute for great lighting and proper exposure, I finally realized that the look almost always had a certain amount of post-processing involved, even before the age of digital. I have been taking seminars and classes from some very generous working pros who have been willing to share in some of the techniques that make their images stand out from what I had been able to achieve. My images have improved a lot as a result.

 

Shootimg raw is good advice and not really a great burden in terms of workflow as you are going to be working the images on the computer anyway, and much of what you do to the image at the raw stage would be done while adjusting the image as a jpeg as well. However, it is not absolutely required to shoot raw, it just gives you more latitude and flexibility.

 

One thing I cannot emphasize enough is to calibrate your working tools. This means, at a minimum, your monitor. I learned this the hard way, but now have all calibrated monitors and scanners, and my prints have been coming back from the lab very close to what I saw on my screen. That being said, I let the lab do my final color balance as I am a bit red/green color blind and I do not trust my judgement in this regard!

 

If you like this image, please fell free to email me and I will try and step you through the process, which is actually far simpler than you might think.<div></div>

[gaetano catelli]

"'I don't know the science of it but use the brightness slider to lighten and the exposure slider to darken.'

 

"Bingo ! Exactly"

 

i'm finding that i too prefer the results of this method compared to the method i cited above.

 

now i'm wondering about the advice given a few weeks ago about shooting available light with the meter set to one stop over and then reducing the exposure by 1 stop in ACR post-processing (as a way of reducing overall noise). in light of the above, is there any advantage to this?

[fotografz]

Hmmm, I don't know Ray, maybe it's my monitor, but that image looks over-processed to

me. The only POP! you'd get with it is if you stuck a pin in those people ; -)

 

Gaetano, most of these DSLRs have a highlight warning feature that flashes blown

highlights. If you get the shots to just flash a warning in the obvious areas of spectral

highlights, you're probably pretty close to getting the toe of the histogram as far right as

possible. The most useful Histogram I've used yet is on the Leica DMR, which places a thin

lined histogram right over the full LCD image.

 

Kari, I'm serious, look at Russell Brown's movies. Very remedial approach to complex

learning curves. These tutorials are supported by Adobe. Go to:

www.russellbrown.com ... and scroll to the Digital Workflow ... which is a 23 meg tutorial

you can download. The movies show you exactly how to do stuff right on screen using

motion illustrations of what to do, instead of reading it from a book and having to

translate it to the screen.

[kari douma]

Thank you ray. I do know how to create the darker background like that in photoshop. I hope you had fun playing!

 

Thank you Marc. I will check into those movies. Like I said, I have my work cut out for me this winter, learning all this stuff!

[ray_pulley]

Marc,

 

Thanks for the input (and the humor). Perhaps I went a little too far in making the happy couple smooth. I'll try and let a little air out of my people next time. ,)

 

<p>Kari, yes it was fun playing. Keep shooting, you are doing well.</p>

 

<p>Go <a href="http://www.thegallerysandiego.com/CouplesLinks.html">here </a> if you want to see this technique applied by the person that taught it to me and who is a far better photographer than I am in all respects. Some might still find the look over-processed, I suppose.</p>

 

Ray

[zoltan_fogarasi1]

Aaron, I mostly use available light and fill in flash. I am not doing too much postprocessing just autolevels and sharpen.

Nadine, I tried all available RAW converters, I used to use C1 Pro, and currently I shoot JPG. Too much work with RAW, takes the time from my family. :)

Kari, there was a window at the side and my flash never overpowers the available light.