A study in dark and not-so-dark
December 30, 2007 7:36 AM Subscribe
I'm an amateur photographer. I recently took some quite close up pictures of a white flowered plant. I thought I'd better turn the exposure down (to -1) to avoid the flash picking out the whiteness of the flowers too much. But it didn't work out so well...
I'm really happy with the composition, etc, of the photos. It's just that they look a little "dark". I know for next time not to pretend to know what I'm doing, and I'll leave the exposure alone in future. But now I have these photos, and I'd like to make them look a little brighter. The leaves of the plant are dark green, while the flowers are bright crisp white, which isn't helping.
I have Irfanview, and Paint, but I'm not sure as to what settings to mess with to get the pictures to look better. At the moment, they look like someone has turned the contrast on a TV down. I've tried using the contrast and brightness settings in Irfanview, but all I succeeded in doing was making the pictures look faded and washed out.
What do I need to do to get these pics looking as stunning as I know they can look? I'm open to buying software, if that's what's necessary, but I'd rather not splash out a fortune if I can help it.
I'm really happy with the composition, etc, of the photos. It's just that they look a little "dark". I know for next time not to pretend to know what I'm doing, and I'll leave the exposure alone in future. But now I have these photos, and I'd like to make them look a little brighter. The leaves of the plant are dark green, while the flowers are bright crisp white, which isn't helping.
I have Irfanview, and Paint, but I'm not sure as to what settings to mess with to get the pictures to look better. At the moment, they look like someone has turned the contrast on a TV down. I've tried using the contrast and brightness settings in Irfanview, but all I succeeded in doing was making the pictures look faded and washed out.
What do I need to do to get these pics looking as stunning as I know they can look? I'm open to buying software, if that's what's necessary, but I'd rather not splash out a fortune if I can help it.
Did the flash even hit the pictures? This can be a problem with macrophotography and they make special flashes that ring the lens for such purposes. I have had the best luck with natural light and a tripod for such work. Any one of these should be able to fix these pictures for you.
posted by caddis at 7:56 AM on December 30, 2007
posted by caddis at 7:56 AM on December 30, 2007
Google's Picasa software can do brightness and contrast jumps (and other simple improvements), for free, and has a very 'beginner' interface.
posted by cowbellemoo at 7:57 AM on December 30, 2007
posted by cowbellemoo at 7:57 AM on December 30, 2007
Seconding kdern. Post them or send them. Someone can help.
posted by bjgeiger at 7:57 AM on December 30, 2007
posted by bjgeiger at 7:57 AM on December 30, 2007
If you're budding photographer, you're better off learning to do it yourself. If you can't afford Photoshop (the industry standard), why not try something like Paint.net and fiddle about with the contrast settings till you get it right? Teach a man to fish etc. :)
posted by ReiToei at 8:57 AM on December 30, 2007
posted by ReiToei at 8:57 AM on December 30, 2007
1. Get Photoshop
2. Find the lasso tool.
3. Set the feathering to 35
4. Draw round the leaves
5. Open Image->Adjust->curves.
6. Drag the midpoint of the bar down (or up, depending on yr settings).
7. Voila: brighter leaves.
posted by bonaldi at 9:40 AM on December 30, 2007
2. Find the lasso tool.
3. Set the feathering to 35
4. Draw round the leaves
5. Open Image->Adjust->curves.
6. Drag the midpoint of the bar down (or up, depending on yr settings).
7. Voila: brighter leaves.
posted by bonaldi at 9:40 AM on December 30, 2007
Alternatively:
Get Photoshop CS3
Image->Adjustments->Exposure
posted by ReiToei at 9:42 AM on December 30, 2007
Get Photoshop CS3
Image->Adjustments->Exposure
posted by ReiToei at 9:42 AM on December 30, 2007
Sounds like a job for the curves tool to me, too. Since it's high contrast anyway, I wouldn't even bother with the lasso tool, just put in a few points so that the higher end stays where it is and pull up the lower end until it looks like you want it. Try and space your points far enough so that you get a nice smooth curve. (I would also use GIMP, no need for Photoshop.)
posted by anaelith at 10:11 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by anaelith at 10:11 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
Curves can do practically anything, but photoshop's Shadowh/Highlights seems like maybe an easier way to get a good result.
posted by aubilenon at 10:45 AM on December 30, 2007
posted by aubilenon at 10:45 AM on December 30, 2007
If you're tempted by all the GET A PHOTOSHOP answers: you can download a 30 day free trial of Photoshop from adobe.com. Image->Adjustments->Exposure (as recommended by ReiToei) is my favorite for this kind of thing. (It was added in Photoshop CS2.)
posted by moonmilk at 11:48 AM on December 30, 2007
posted by moonmilk at 11:48 AM on December 30, 2007
Also - you might try Picnik, which offers free online photo editing. It's integrated with Flickr as well. It basically works like iphoto or Picasa, but online.
posted by kdern at 12:42 PM on December 30, 2007
posted by kdern at 12:42 PM on December 30, 2007
Response by poster: Firstly, thank you very much to the people who offered to edit the files for me. That was very decent of you. Secondly, to everyone else who helped, thank you for your help. It is much appreciated.
However, I found out after asking the question that Irfanview has a newer version out to the one I have. So I downloaded it, and the plugins, and it now (version 4.10) has an "auto adjust colours" option. I tried that, and it's done exactly what I wanted to the pictures - it's brightened them up really nicely. The flowers still look crisp and well defined, but the leaves aren't darker than the colour of the Live Preview box below any longer.
posted by Don-da-lah at 1:33 PM on December 30, 2007
However, I found out after asking the question that Irfanview has a newer version out to the one I have. So I downloaded it, and the plugins, and it now (version 4.10) has an "auto adjust colours" option. I tried that, and it's done exactly what I wanted to the pictures - it's brightened them up really nicely. The flowers still look crisp and well defined, but the leaves aren't darker than the colour of the Live Preview box below any longer.
posted by Don-da-lah at 1:33 PM on December 30, 2007
For future reference, since you're doing close-up (macro) photography you might want to bring a scrap of thin white paper or paper coffee filter and some tape. Tape the paper over the flash making sure the tape itself doesn't cover the flash. You'll still get some of the brightness from the flash but it won't be as harsh and powerful.
posted by junesix at 7:36 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by junesix at 7:36 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
Your question has been answered, but nobody has addressed the original cause of the problem. And whilst photo manipulation software is getting really clever, you will get a better result if you get the exposure pretty close in-camera.
So for next time ...
In case you haven't already realised you were 180 degrees out in your thinking. And don't worry, you are not alone!
Perhaps counter-intuitively you should actually overexpose if you are photographing something light. You need to underexpose when you are photographing something dark.
The reason is that your camera has no idea what it is actually photographing. Basically (and this is over-simplifying what the computers in a modern camera can do, but the basic premise remains valid) the camera assumes it is photographing a scene with an average brightness of 18% grey. In the real world (or in a hypothetical one at least) one moment you might be photographing a polar bear on an iceberg, and the next moment a black cat at night.
To make the scene appear brighter (so that the polar bear looks white, rather than grey) the camera needs to be told to overexpose the scene. To make the scene appear darker (so the cat looks black and not grey) the camera needs to be told to underexpose the scene. This is true whether you are shooting with flash or not.
So next time you're shooting white flowers, and the white parts of the flower take up a reasonable proportion of the frame, try experimenting with overexposure. So long as you don't blow out the white petals you should find the rest of the plant looks more life-like and 'cleaner' in your photos, without the red, green and blue noise you'll probably find the software adjustments have made more prominent in the darker areas of your current set of photos.
posted by puffmoike at 4:49 AM on December 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
So for next time ...
In case you haven't already realised you were 180 degrees out in your thinking. And don't worry, you are not alone!
Perhaps counter-intuitively you should actually overexpose if you are photographing something light. You need to underexpose when you are photographing something dark.
The reason is that your camera has no idea what it is actually photographing. Basically (and this is over-simplifying what the computers in a modern camera can do, but the basic premise remains valid) the camera assumes it is photographing a scene with an average brightness of 18% grey. In the real world (or in a hypothetical one at least) one moment you might be photographing a polar bear on an iceberg, and the next moment a black cat at night.
To make the scene appear brighter (so that the polar bear looks white, rather than grey) the camera needs to be told to overexpose the scene. To make the scene appear darker (so the cat looks black and not grey) the camera needs to be told to underexpose the scene. This is true whether you are shooting with flash or not.
So next time you're shooting white flowers, and the white parts of the flower take up a reasonable proportion of the frame, try experimenting with overexposure. So long as you don't blow out the white petals you should find the rest of the plant looks more life-like and 'cleaner' in your photos, without the red, green and blue noise you'll probably find the software adjustments have made more prominent in the darker areas of your current set of photos.
posted by puffmoike at 4:49 AM on December 31, 2007 [2 favorites]
Oh, and junesix's advice is well worth experimenting with as well.
posted by puffmoike at 4:51 AM on December 31, 2007
posted by puffmoike at 4:51 AM on December 31, 2007
Also, if you're shooting high contrast objects, you might need to bracket and composite in order to get a decent image, because your camera might not have enough range to cover the full dynamic range of the object. In other words, shoot one frame at -1EV, one frame at 0, and one frame at +1EV. Then use Photoshop after the fact to merge the shadow details from the brighter ones with the highlight details from the darker ones. Obviously, this only works with non-moving objects. If you're shooting raw, you can somewhat fake it by taking different images off of the raw file at different exposure levels, but it won't look quite as good as manual bracketing. This works because most dSLR sensors have 12- or 14-bit range, and jpegs only capture 8-bit, so the raw files actually have more color depth in them.
posted by Caviar at 6:39 AM on December 31, 2007
posted by Caviar at 6:39 AM on December 31, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kdern at 7:51 AM on December 30, 2007