Reclaiming the Sky

Boiling Sky, Langdon, New Hampshire

Finding the Hidden Detail 

 

Overcast skies have always been a challenge for photography and this is especially true in the Autumn, when the weather becomes more changeable. As I mentioned in last weeks blog article, the best approach flat dull skies has often been to crop them from the image, but with new powerful editing software it is possible to find interesting detail in those grey clouds without creating muddy foregrounds.   It is time to reclaim the sky.

Cheating with the Sky

For years it had been a habit of mine to collect images of nice skies.  Whether it was puffy white confections floating in a deep blue orb

Sky Archive

or the lovely colors of a golden sunset, I would always pause during my shoots to capture a few shots of the sky with as little ground as possible.  I would save these treasures in my "skies" folder to be pulled out whenever I had a picture with a lovely foreground but a flat washed out, overcast sky.  Back then, the selection tools in Photoshop were not as sophisticated as now, but I would still spend

Cheating on the Sky

time trying to seamlessly composite one of my skies to save my image.  The trick was to find a sky that seemed to match the scene's light direction and color, while muting the stark contrast between a bright sky and the softer foreground.  My results were decidedly mixed and, of course, bathed with artistic dishonesty. What can I say, I've always been willing to compromise my morals in the service of the image. The picture here represents the first time in years that I have blended a different sky into an image. The effect is purposely exaggerated, but I'm still glad that I don't have to do this anymore. 

 

 

Black Mountain, Dummerston, Vt

Things have changed in the last few years.  Today, It is a struggle to even find my Sky Folder.  The sky hasn't changed, and my moral compass hasn't shifted.  The difference has to do with the improvement in image depth and quality and the remarkable advances in editing software.   I can now bring out the the detail and drama that I saw in those dark and brooding skies

 

Winter Clouds Over Mt. Monadnock, Marlborough, NH

Shooting in the RAW

The first key to salvaging flat skies is a properly exposed RAW image.  It seems strange now that there was a time when I actually struggled over the question of whether I should switch my shooting from jpg to RAW.  The enhanced image depth from an 8 bit jpg to a 14 bit RAW file means that I can work with 16,000 tonal gradations as opposed to just 256.  That difference is especially powerful at the upper end of the brightness spectrum where the increased depth allows wonderful detail to be drawn out, even from apparently featureless skies.  This was never possible with jpg files.  (see my article about exposing to the right).  Proper exposure is still important. It is critical to avoid over-exposure which can result in blown out the highlights.  Here again the histogram is invaluable.  A properly exposed RAW file is the essential prerequisite, providing the information necessary for the next step to a reclaim the sky and that  next step comes in the software.

Software Highlight Control
 

There have been substantial improvements in highlight management in recent versions of photo editing software.  Here I will be speaking of Photoshop and Lightroom (LR), but there may be similar tools in other programs.  Essentially what the software does is to expand the tonal range in the highlights of the sky to provide more contrast without unnaturally darkening the rest of the image.  Again, it is important to start with the increased tonal range found in the RAW file.   There are a number of tools that can be used to reach this goal.

Shadow/Highlight

Since its introduction in Photoshop CS, one of my favorite tools in Photoshop has been the Shadow/Highlight adjuster (S/H).  This is found in the adjustment section of the Image pull-down menu..  The tool almost magically allows individual adjustment of both the highlights and shadows in an image. For this discussion, I will be focusing on the highlights where the S/H tool draws out the contrast and detail in the skies.  The Tonal Depth slider controls

Shadow / Highlight Adjustment

the range of the effect restricting it to the desired areas of brightness.  Shadow/Highlight is often one of my first steps in managing highlights, but it must be used carefully.  Overuse can lead to unnatural appearing skies and the presence of bright halos around areas of high contrast. The halos can be controlled by adjusting the radius slider.   Even with the increased tonal depth of RAW images, attempting to draw out too much contrast can lead to the appearance of posturization, with sharp steps between tones.  The goal should be to adjust the sky to reveal the detail seen on site.  I must point out that the S/H tool is too complex to be available on an adjustment layer and has to be applied to the actual image.   To protect the background image I always work with S/H on a copy of the image layer.  Alternatively, the  S/H adjustments can be applied to a Smart Object Layer, allowing continuous adjustment as the editing process proceeds.  The S/H tool is remarkably powerful but in recently I save these adjustments for later in my editing work-flow and do much of my "sky work" in the RAW of Lightroom.

Lightroom and Camera Raw

Newer versions of Lightroom and Photoshop’s Camera Raw have added greater flexibility in dealing with lost details in the highlights and have eliminated or reduced my need to use S/H later in my workflow.  Recently I have shifted much of my RAW editing from Camera Raw to Lightroom 5.  I find the work flow to be much

Flat Raw Image / Good Histogram

easier and more intuitive, but newer versions of Camera RAW have similar capabilities. In my photograph of fall color across a field in Langdon, New Hampshire, the original RAW image appears flat with washed out colors and the sky has none of the color  and contrast that I remembered from the scene.  This is typical for unedited RAW images, but, as can be seen in Lightroom 5, the histogram reveals good tonal range.  The highlights are shifted to the right but are not blown out.  The picture does not look great, but I know that my vision is hidden within the pixels, straining to be released.

The Develop Module

In Lightroom's Develop Module, I slightly increased the exposure and then reduced the Highlights and Whites sliders to reveal the sky detail.  The Shadow and Blacks sliders controled the exposure and contrast in the shadow areas.  My basic approach is to use the

Lightroom 5 Development

Whites and Shadows sliders to make the major changes.  I then increase the Highlights slider to add contrast and avoid muddiness in the sky.   In the same way,  I decrease the Blacks slider to  provide contrast and definition to the shadows.  The result  should be softer contrast in the mid tones while preserving the "Pop" in the highlights and shadows.  These alterations could be done with careful manipulation of levels and curves in Photoshop, but they are easier and more naturally controlled in LR or Camera Raw.  And all changes are reversible and nondestructive. 

After my tonal adjustments I continue to work through the Develop Module.  I have come to like the workflow suggested by the stack of tools in this module.  I adjust vibrance and clarity.  I make some preliminary tweaks to sharpness and noise, although my final sharpening is always reserved for the end of my editing, when I have the image at its desired size.  The automatic Lens and Chromatic Aberration controls generally work well, but I always zoom in to the edges to to make any necessary custom adjustments. 

 

Photoshop Tweaking

Shadow/Highlight Adjustment

By the time I move my images over to Photoshop, the skies are generally looking pretty good.  I may still use the S/H tool but the

Selective Curve Adjustment in SKy

adjustments can be fairly subtle and much less likely to add artifacts and halos.   In this image I took the further step of isolating the sky in a carefully drawn selection and then added further contrast with a curves layer.  The end result was purposely over done for illustration, but the advantage of the selection is that I was able to invert it to apply a separate curve adjustment to the foreground.  Normally I would mute the effects shown here but in every step the strength of the manipulations are strictly a matter of taste.

 

 

That's it.   The result is a image that shows the brilliant fall color against the dramatic boiling sky that was visible on that cool autumn morning.   It only remains to add a couple of caveats.  

First I apologize for rushing through descriptions of editing that would require books to fully describe.  My purpose is only to illustrate what is possible in our amazing digital world.  Full understanding and control of these tools is really an exciting, life-time journey.   For those who don't have access to programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop, I can only say that amazing capabilities are within the range of most budgets.  Lightroom 5 is available for only $149 - save your pennies.

 

Steel Sky, Chesterfield, NH

 

Some will say that the same results could be obtained with a multi-image HDR.  Certainly true, but for me the adjustment of the single image is easier to control, more natural, and less subject to artifacts and noise.  

As always it is a matter of taste, but regardless of your approach, get out there and reclaim the sky!

Jeffrey Newcomer

Partridgebrookreflections.com

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Dealing with the Dapple

Digital Solutions to the Challenge of Exposure
in Patchy Bright Light

Dappled forest Sunlight, Gridley River, Wales Preserve, Sharon, New Hampshire

One of the biggest photographic challenges is managing exposure in spotty or dappled light. If you require proof, just take a hike in our beautiful New England forests on a bright sunny summer day. I did that just last week.

Bagel Mill Show
Early this week I set up a show at the Bagel Mill in Peterborough, New Hampshire. It is a great place to display my photographs and a great place for a quick snack or a long lingering cup of coffee. Check out the show. The Cafe is tucked away on a side street off of route 202 just west of the intersection with 101.

Bagel Mill, Peterborough, NH 

View Larger Map  |  Get Directions  |  View Bird's Eye

As I was finishing the set-up, Jim, the Cafe owner, told me about a lovely little forest preserve in nearby Sharon. He gave me detailed directions to the Wales Preserve, but I knew I was in trouble when his map went over to second sheet of paper. Needless to say I got lost, but I was lost along a beautiful stretch of upland pastures which commanded spectacular views of Mount Monadnock. It was a new area for me and I didn’t mind the confusion one bit.



Wales Preserve
With the help of my New Hampshire Gazetteer and GPS I finally found the Wales Preserve. The compact 49 acre forest is managed by the Nature Conservancy and encompasses a lovely section of Gridley River. The “river” is actually more of a brook in this section and is also charmingly know as “McCoy's Sabbath Day Trout Creek”. The easy trail parallels the brook as it gentle descends through series of lovely cascades and pools. The day was sunny and refreshingly cool with the dappled sunlight playing magically across the rushing water and the forest path. New England forest are dream-like on sunny days, but the restless kaleidoscopic patterns of brilliant light and deep shadows are a nightmare for photographers trying to capture the full dynamic range of the experience. I think there may be no more challenging conditions in which to manage photographic exposure than in dappled light. My hike got me thinking about the various ways that this problem might be attacked. My next thought was “Blog”. I apologize for the length of this article, but it was interesting to think through the various approaches that are available to the digital photographer.


In my film days I had largely abandoned attempts to capture forest trails in bright sunlight. I found myself always trying to decide between exposing for the highlights, leaving everything else in impenetrable shadow or opening up to catch the mid and dark tones while completely blowing out the highlights. I often was left with a muddy compromise with nothing well exposed. The usual solutions to high contrast, such as variable neutral density filters, couldn’t work with restless patches of brightness wandering randomly throughout the scene. Then along came digital.

Digital to the Rescue
Digital photography and processing has provided a number of new techniques for dealing with patchy high contrast situations. None are perfect in all situations, but they provide options where none previously existed.

The Artistic Option
First, it should be said that it is not always necessary to squash the full dynamic range into your image. It is still a valid artistic choice to focus on the highlights or shadows and let the opposite end of the dynamic range go. The result will not be the most accurate representation of the scene, but can be an interesting and dramatic choice. Who said images have to be close to the natural experience?

I Did!
OK, enough of that artsy stuff; let’s talk about capturing the scene.

First, Shoot Raw! :
It is difficult to believe that there are still folks out there who will dispute the value of shooting RAW, but when attempting to tame high contrast and especially dappled lighting it is a necessary prerequisite. The expanded dynamic range of RAW images is essential to most of the techniques I will discuss. Many of which involve capturing multiple bracketed images, but you should start by shooting RAW! 





 
Multi- Image Solutions

HDR Software

Photomatix HDR

Multi-image high dynamic range photography using software
solutions such as Photomatix or the capabilities built into recent versions of Photoshop are obvious approaches to this problem, but I have found that the algorithms used by these programs have trouble with the constantly moving forest foliage. HDR software works best with static scenes and the dapples of brightness in the sunlit forest are never in the same spot from image to image. Anti-ghosting options can be of some help, but this is a real challenge for the software. Masters of HDR can get some very interesting results but I seldom find that HDR software yields the best natural appearing images in these challenging conditions.


 

Manual Blending of Bracketed Image(s) 
 

Patches of blown-out hihiglights

I found many interesting cascades along the Gridley River, often with a lovely emerald tint from the illuminated canopy. In my Emerald Cascade image much of the water was in shadow, but a few brilliant reflections distracted from the soft flow

Detail in Highlight

and color. I bracketed my images and had to go quite dark to begin to see a trace of detail in the dappled patches. I eventually used two images, one exposed for the general, scene and the other to capture detail in the few areas of highlight. I aligned the two images and then masked the dark layer, painting in just a touch of detail over the highlighted patches. Because the dappling moves slightly between images, I had to do a little blending and cloning to get a natural appearance of the transitions between light and dark.



Emerald Cascade

Two Image Manually Blended

I was pleased with the final result. My goal was to keep the flashes of light from distracting from the soft appearance of the cascade. The challenge with this technique is to soften the blown out highlights without losing the magic of the dappling. Manual blending works nicely when only a few areas of distracting highlight require muting, but this approach becomes much more time consuming and tedious when applied to an picture with many bright patches, such as my earlier trail image. I gave it a try, but in such situations the magic of Photoshop and Lightroom can be a lifesaver. 



Single Images
Although using multiple images can lead to a better result in some situations, an appropriately exposed single image can also be edited

Dark, but Highlights Preserved

to control scattered bright highlights, and processing a single image is easier since it avoids the need align multiple layers and adjust for movement of the dapples. This is where the wider dynamic range of RAW files is particularly important. Returning to my trail image, I start again with the multiple images, but in post I look for the brightest image that still retains detail in the highlights. This invariably means that I start with a dark image with
 increased noise in the shadows, but I study the histogram and select the one shifted the furthest to the right without completely blowing out the highlights. As I have discussed in a previous blog, because of the increased data in the highlights, shooting to the right is always best even when you can’t go as far to the right as you would like. As the histogram moves to the right, the dark zones get pulled into areas greater bit density and noise is reduced. Trust me or go read my "Exposing to the Right" article . Anyway, in case of dapple light, the images will still be dark and noise will still be an issue, but improved noise reduction functions can do a lot to minimize the damage.

 

Single Image Editing , Lightroom 5

Photoshop and Lightroom provide a number of ways to process the single images to bring out its full dynamic range. In past versions of Photoshop, I would double process the image in Camera Raw, once for the highlights and a second time for the shadows and then manually blend the two images . With one image, the blending process is much easier since the image content is identical. Newer versions of these programs now

Modified Single Image

have much more sophisticated controls of shadow and highlights and today I almost never find the need to double process. Within Camera RAW or Lightroom, the controls allow independent adjustments in shadow and highlights along with the ability to set levels of blacks and whites. Once within Photoshop the Shadow/Highlight control allows for further adjustments. It is often a combination of techniques which work best to pull out the amazing amount of dynamic range which lies in the deep well of the RAW files. 




 








The bottom line is that the digital photographer now has a wide range of options to control challenging high dynamic range situations. Whether you use HDR, image blending or the remarkable controls in Lightroom and Photoshop, the result is that the sunny forest is no longer a forbidding place for photographers. 

Forest Glade, Arlington, Vermont

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