Editing opinion request

[shutterfinger]

Today I shot some Snowy Egrets on Bair Island with a Nikon D300, 35-135 f3.5-f4.5 AF zoom and Nikon TC 201 2x teleconverter at times. Previous attempts left the bird's feathers burned out in bright sun. Today I shot at -2 stops exposure compensation. The birds look good but the surrounding do not look natural.
Images were saved in camera RAW, converted to Tiff 16 bit in Capture NX-D then converted to jpeg in CS5.1.
Egrets 2a is the unedited image.
Egrets 2 is the edit I did in CS5.
Adjustments are Levels, highlight to edge of line, about 240, midtone about 1.02 or 98 as I don't remember; Exposure midtone eyedropper on the brush, shadow eyedropper on a shadow resulting in a +1.02 on exposure, -08 on offset, gamma at 1.
How would you handle this in PS?

 

[Zathras]

Today I shot some Snowy Egrets on Bair Island with a Nikon D300, 35-135 f3.5-f4.5 AF zoom and Nikon TC 201 2x teleconverter at times. Previous attempts left the bird's feathers burned out in bright sun. Today I shot at -2 stops exposure compensation. The birds look good but the surrounding do not look natural.
Images were saved in camera RAW, converted to Tiff 16 bit in Capture NX-D then converted to jpeg in CS5.1.
Egrets 2a is the unedited image. View attachment 232010
Egrets 2 is the edit I did in CS5. View attachment 232011
Adjustments are Levels, highlight to edge of line, about 240, midtone about 1.02 or 98 as I don't remember; Exposure midtone eyedropper on the brush, shadow eyedropper on a shadow resulting in a +1.02 on exposure, -08 on offset, gamma at 1.
How would you handle this in PS?

Hi Shutterfinger,

I downloaded your pic and worked on it in Photoshop CS6. When I open any file in Photoshop, the first thing I usually do is to add a Hue/Saturation layer. I then slide the Saturation slider all the way to the left, so it now shows as a B&W image on the screen. Next, I add a Exposure layer and increase or decrease the exposure, being careful not to blow the highlights out. Then, I'll add a Levels layer and move the sliders around until I feel the image looks good in B&W. At this point, I uncheck the box for the Hue/Saturation layer so I can see the image in color. The color saturation can change radically when the Hue/Saturation is deselected, so I will re-check the box and readjust the Saturation slider until the color saturation looks good to me. If you send me your email in a private message, I can send you back a Photoshop .psd file of your picture, so you can see just what I did.

Mike Sullivan

 

[shutterfinger]

Thanks for the details of your adjustments. I apologize for the smallish image.
Now i have a new problem. Any adjustment I make in CS5 to the Tiff also shows up in the NEF although they are in separate folders and no adjustments were made to the raw file, any clues what may cause this? Windows 10 Pro version 1903, build 18362.387; Capture NX-D Version 1.5.2; CS 5 Version 12.1.1. I have not had this happen before.

 

[shutterfinger]

OK, here's a different shot, Egrets 3 the 16 bit Tiff reduced to 8 bit 8x12 jpeg, 3a the result of a layer levels adjustment as described in post 2.
Feel free to download and play with it.

 

[Kino]

Thanks for the details of your adjustments. I apologize for the smallish image.
Now i have a new problem. Any adjustment I make in CS5 to the Tiff also shows up in the NEF although they are in separate folders and no adjustments were made to the raw file, any clues what may cause this? Windows 10 Pro version 1903, build 18362.387; Capture NX-D Version 1.5.2; CS 5 Version 12.1.1. I have not had this happen before.

I am thinking that there is a dynamic link established between the RAW/NEF, TIFF and the JPG file. When you edit the TIFF in CS5, the changes in appearance are cascaded back to the RAW/NEF file representation in the metadata. The file is still RAW/NEF, but it is somehow linking back through to the original export program to display the changes you made in CS5.

I think you can click on the thumbnail of the image in Capture NX-D or NewNX-i and select "revert to original" and see the initial interpretation of the RAW/NEF file.

EDIT: Actually, there is a dynamic link between the RAW/NEF and TIFF file established by the Nikon program, but then CS5 establishes a dynamic link between the TIFF and the .jpg file, so you have one cascading into another.

 

[Zathras]

Thanks for the details of your adjustments. I apologize for the smallish image.
Now i have a new problem. Any adjustment I make in CS5 to the Tiff also shows up in the NEF although they are in separate folders and no adjustments were made to the raw file, any clues what may cause this? Windows 10 Pro version 1903, build 18362.387; Capture NX-D Version 1.5.2; CS 5 Version 12.1.1. I have not had this happen before.

I'm unfamiliar with the NEF file. Is that Nikon's RAW format? When you open a RAW file, are you using Photoshop, or are you going through the Nikon software? I don't use the software that came with my camera, I open the RAW file directly in Photoshop. When I open the RAW file, DNG in my case, it first opens in Adobe Camera Raw and allows me to make basic adjustments. I usually skip this step and click on "OPEN FILE" to go directly into Photoshop and then make my adjustments as described in Post #2. When I want to save my work, the program by default asks if I want to save it as a Photoshop PSD file. That is how I save it when I have a whole bunch of layers that I added. By doing it this way, the original camera file stays unchanged.

 

[Kino]

If I was unclear, the NEF/RAW file is not changed in the scenario I wrote about above; only the interpretive data in the Metadata sidecar is changed.

Raw files cannot be viewed unless there is some form of interpretation applied; it is just data.

Many assumptions/rules are applied by the software package opening the file to view and depends upon the individual software package you choose to open and edit the NEF/RAW file; Nikon software imposes its own set of rules/assumptions for a baseline "look", as does Adobe PS or whatever and that is why a RAW file can look substantially different when opened in various programs BEFORE any adjustments have been applied.

When you open a RAW file, these baseline assumptions are (most often) written to a Metadata sidecar dynamically linked to the RAW data that the program can use to display the RAW data. If the RAW file can be opened by more than one program, you can find yourself overwriting those baseline assumptions for a look each time you open it in a different program... or not.

Depends on the program or programs you use.

In any event, if you are working with true RAW files, you can comfortably ignore whatever preview you see when you open the file in an editing software package and just go about your business.

 

[Kino]

I'm unfamiliar with the NEF file. Is that Nikon's RAW format? When you open a RAW file, are you using Photoshop, or are you going through the Nikon software? I don't use the software that came with my camera, I open the RAW file directly in Photoshop.

If I remember correctly, some newer versions of RAW cannot be opened directly in CS5 Photoshop, so if you intend to work with this version, you have to export the image via the Nikon software to a TIFF file before PS CS5 can work with the data...

 

[jim10219]

When you open a raw file, such as a .nef in PS, it creates a .xmp companion file that records all of the import information. That's the stuff you do when you open the file, and it brings up that first window with a bunch of sliders, before you can do any heavy edits to it. So when you reopen that .nef raw file, it also opens up the old .xmp file and reapplies those settings. To get rid of it, delete the .xmp file with the same name as the .nef.

As for what to do with the file, open in up in the full photoshop and isolate the birds into a separate layer. Then you can edit the background and the birds separately. After that, it should be easy to get the exposure right on both.

 

[shutterfinger]

When I open the RAW file, DNG in my case, it first opens in Adobe Camera Raw and allows me to make basic adjustments.

NEF files do the same.
Nikon Electronic Format = camera raw. Capture NX-D (Nikon's free converter) does a much better job than Adobe when converting NEF files. I've been keeping them in Pictures and suspect that Windows tries to make everything look the same in the background.
In the Windows Home edition of the old desktop I saved the files to a folder on the C drive and did not have the problem.
Time to do some file moving/copying.

 

[shutterfinger]

And it was Windows Picture folder making the unwanted changes. When I moved the folder to a different location the raw changes went away.

 

[jtk]

NIK.

 

[glbeas]

Sounds like a job for the curves adjustment. Keep the shadow slope as is and just work the highlight end.

 

[shutterfinger]

Today I went out to Bair Island with the D300, 300mm f4.5 AIS, TC201, Bogen monopod and made 93 shots. Of the 93, 25 are usable, no camera shake or poor framing. While editing the 25 I switched to Layers, Adjustment layer, Curves, adjusted the highlight end then the spike in the shadows end which was the water. Definitely less complicated to get good results.