Dusk Photo 31/5/2006

Playing around with different processing techniques. The original photo is shown on the left and different curve adjustments are shown in the next three photos. Software used was Picture Windows Pro 3.5.10, 16 bit AdobeRGB TIFFs are used except for final export which are sRGB JPGs. TIFFs were exported from Capture One 3.7.4 converted from RAW.

• First step is to crop and resize the photos.
• The photo is then normalized, the image is recaled so that the darkest and brightest pixels in the image are set to 0% and 100% brightness respectively.
• The image is inverted (negative)
• The Brightness Curve is then used to increase the brightness of the darkest pixels. A single control point is used, usually mapping 50% to 60% or 70%, occasionally 80%. As this curve is applied to the negative, the action of the postive image is to bring the brightest areas down, increasing the contrast in the highlight.
• The image is re-inverted, so it is a positive image again.
• The Brightness Curve is used again to raise the values of the dark areas. Usually a smaller correction is applied compared to before.
• The photo is then sharpened.

Original Photo

Curves Adjustments in HSL colour space

Curves Adjustments in HSL and HSV colour spaces

Curves Adjustments in HSV colour space

Comparison

Blended Version

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