through a new reality.

T H R O U G H   a   n e w   R E A L I T Y .

This always happens. Another trip into the Sierras and my head is already filled with dreams of the next. On our way heading north home then I stopped again at the Mono Basin Visitor Center to pick up a copy of Steve Roper's book detailing the High Route he pioneered in the early eighties. Sitting next to pools hot California air while J swam halfway through the introduction or so Roper mentioned a book of photographs published in the mid-nineties by climber-photographer Claude Fiddler. I underlined it. Once home promptly ordered an old worn copy from Better World Books for a buck or so. A couple weeks later I was cracking open the spine.

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It really is incredible. Smelled particularly old and dusty proper. The printing and paper and typography and design aside I was immediately drawn to a handful of Fiddler's large-format photographs. And so in the space of one in particular taken of Cathedral Peak in the pale hue of dusk I discovered a new truth. Or at least in some way to me a new sort of reality.

And as I poured over the frame what I realized was there were no overly-dense blacks. No over-saturated over-exaggerated hues. Just a soft mellow tone that spoke volumes to me of the moment more true than any photograph I have ever viewed of Cathedral. The far end of the photographic vision spectrum. 

But I also realized how this likely would not catch the eye of someone breezing through an endless barage of images as we approach sensory overload in this over-saturated (pun maybe intended) media world. Where posting a photo with text statistically gets higher rankings on Facebook. Where a quick photo is the new expression of every thought and idea we have. Marketing. Imagery is everywhere and in everything permeating our very conscious. The irony of course is how - despite all of this - so little of it is original anymore.

So surprising then on some level whilst sitting motionless staring into Claude Fiddler's frames of Cathedral and another of Wanda Lake sitting on the front porch I had the breath sucked right out of me. They were - maybe in a single word... effortless. Timeless. Not dated by their Instagram-filter-of-the-year effect but instead infinite for their austerity.

Beautiful.

I look through photographs made today - my own included - like so much rubbish rarely moved as I was in an instant by Fiddler's simple work.

Beyond that I am aware of the possibility of its display. In a book viewed on paper held in my hands versus some illuminated monitor propped up glaring back at me. Something tactile and tangible. Thick with a worn sheen a little yellowed around the edges. Another thing I think we forget in our self-created screen-obsessed world… the beauty in the simplicity of holding a book or seeing a large image on display hung proudly on a wall framed perfectly. Of looking into a print made on paper of inks mixed together instead of photons and the effect it has on our subconscious. Of pouring over the recesses and the details. I remember reading once how our minds are literally blown away by the resolution of an eight-by-ten contact print. Of how we literally cannot process all of the information presented to us. All of the detail. And so the image seems unreal.

Little I see online seems unreal in this way. Maybe so - differently... as in unrealistic. Even something of my own from a trip of ours two summers ago into the Sierras I look at now with disappointment and dismay.

But if anything in this age of digital we are afforded a second chance.

And so I dug up the camera raw file buried on my server to look at it with a new eye. A new vision of what is truth. Or closer to it just a different way of seeing it maybe a little less pristine and processed and a little more yellowed around the edges.

So I muted it a bit. Softened the endpoints of the linear curve on the shadows and highlights. Opened up the midtones but with an overall flattening effect while at the same time compressing the tones slightly to give the twilight its proper respectable place. This was not a high-dynamic range image of false contrasts and phony saturation but rather a quiet evening best represented more in this way I now find.

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A photograph is never honest I am aware no matter how hard we try. And just as this shows it can be interpreted infinitely. Here I can no longer completely recall the ambience there lying down in the grass getting eaten alive by the swarms of filthy mosquitoes trying to squeeze in a few more images of the fading light next to the outlet stream making its way down from Hungry Packer to Sailor Lake Picture Peak towering above it all. J off running somewhere getting his own photographs or swatting at bugs or both. Left to guess now erring if anything this side of under-processing. But I look at both renditions. Both interpretations. And - maybe like an imperfect performance of some piano sonata or other by old fragile hands - the muted image speaks to me in a deeper sense perhaps because of the very fact it now lacks the punch of its predecessor.

Even these thoughts I know are not original. Other photographers have approached their work in this way. Abstaining from the eye-catching sameness of exaggerated truths. This is nothing new. But regardless - for me I sense a pivotal moment in my ever-learning how to see - and ultimately interpret the wild places in which I will always explore and in my attempt - likely futile at best - to capture in a photograph their essence.

light meter calibration.

So I realize I am getting ahead of myself cos I am still writing out a bunch of random thoughts about the purchase a month or so ago of an old beautiful cherry wood field view camera and what I have been going through in order to get up to speed using such an incredible instrument. More on that eventually.

But part of that getting up to speed included breaking out some of my old film equipment stuffed in scratched Pelican cases one of which was my Soligor Spot Sensor II (analog version) light meter. I took it and some Polaroids and the Westa camera to K's parent's place in eastern Washington over the fourth to test.

The Polaroids were coming out blank.

Unsure of whether or not it was a bad lot of expired Polaroids (I've now tried two separate packages though both dated the same so likely from the same batch) or my inexperience at operating a view camera (although a precision photographic instrument it's not really rocket science) or ... the light meter misreading the reflected light.

So I started digging on the interwebs and found some random but very little help on calibration of old analog spot meters (thank God it is analog though ... I'm not sure what it would take to calibrate a digital meter - surely more than the tools I employed for this little bit of surgery I'll explain below). Of the two pieces of information I found amongst the many more numerous posts of people inquiring as to calibrating these particular meters (with no real answers) the first was that there is apparently only one guy somewhere in Vermont who does these kind of repairs and the second was buried in replies to one of the posts about how - unbeknownst to many I can only assume - hidden under the logo of the meter are three teeny tiny pan pots that the guy assumed were used for calibration (but said he was scared to touch them so left them alone).

I however ... am not. Armed with a utility knife to pry off the little metal decal (glued on most likely with a drop of super glue on either side - exactly how I will reattach it) and a small safety pin I went to work -

A close-up above showing the three pan pots which I discovered roughly as such: the left one is a trim dial that fine-tunes the calibration (i.e. barely changes the reading of the meter), the middle one is the roughest dial while the right pot is in between the two. Simply using the end of the pin I was able to dial these around to adjust the sensitivity of the meter.

Not really visible in the first picture is my masking tape mockup of the Zone System on the lens barrel (I can't believe you can actually pay money for what amounts to a small piece of masking tape marked in permanent pen with the eleven zones from 0 to X that then align with the various EV readouts - on the Soligor the EV scale runs from 2 to 18).

So not really being terribly scientific at this point - I just knew the meter was mis-calibrated and was overexposing by two to three stops (two at lower light levels; three at brighter levels) - I took my trusty 7D and found the  grey house across the street to be close to an 18% grey.

Purposely throwing the image out of focus I set the 7D's light meter to the spot mode (which has about 1.5% coverage area dead-center - the Soligor has 1% coverage but close enough) - the lens (although not a prime lens unfortunately but again - not really being too scientific here) zoomed to roughly 50mm or a 1:1 ratio - taking the camera away from my eye the proportions across the street were about the same) - and aperture priority of f/5.6

I got a reading of 1/125th of a second at an ISO of 100.

So setting the Soligor similarly to ASA 100 I aimed it at the house - it was a bit low (reading an EV of 10 which - with an exposure of f/5.6 and 1/125th - would place the grey two stops above middle grey - i.e. two stops overexposed). I wanted an EV reading of 12 which would put the grey of the house at roughly 18% and match the exposure reading of the Canon (although I know Canon's meters tend to run a smidge hot - again - this is hardly scientific until I get to the next step).

A few little adjustments to the pan pots and boom -

In order to test at least a little validity of this crazy setup I brought the resulting files into Photoshop.

Now I am fully aware of the gamma correction in Adobe Camera Raw vs. another application like Canon's Digital Photo Professional utility (thus - the huge disparity of gamma corrections between applications and the multitude of RGB profile spaces like ACR's ProPhoto or Canon's fairly arbitrary and highly-generic 'Wide Gamut' color space and the gammas of each) and how that certainly affects the rendering of values (as does the bit-depth and so on).

I probably should have stressed at the start how this is hardly scientific as I seem to continue to repeat that mantra - and that if you did choose to pay some guy in Vermont a hundred clams (I'm too cheap and always assume I can do whatever myself) to calibrate your light meter he probably has some more - umm - professional standards ... or maybe not haha.

But anyway - I used ACR and converted the blurry image of the house to the sRGB color space (roughly a gamma of 2.1 I believe). I cropped in and then introduced yet another variable by having Photoshop's behind-the-scenes-unknown-to-me-and-everyone-else-besides-Thomas-Knoll algorithm convert to greyscale (20% dot gain).

Dropped an eye dropper on the image and ...

Pretty darn close (theoretically an RGB value of 128 is middle grey - i.e. 18% grey - but it depends on the gamma curve and color space - with a gamma correction of 2.2 and sRGB I believe it is supposedly somewhere closer to 114 ... ). But after the 3.5 million other variables introduced in this highly arbitrary calibration exercise a value of 123 is pretty incredible. Which tells me - albeit somewhat roughly - that f/5.6 125th/second at ISO 100 was the correct exposure to capture what I wanted and place it at a value equal to middle grey (highly important with Zone exposure!).

I'm feeling much better.

Now - all of that of course is completely useless because I do not plan on somehow incorporating my 7D into the mix when photographing on sheets of 4x5" film with an old wooden camera. So the real calibration is of course the combination of dialing in the meter to my specific film (ADOX ASA 25 panchromatic) and developer (ADOX Adonal)-slash-development (temperature of the developer/how much agitation/total development time) combination. Using that combination after shooting an image of an 18% grey card (which I think I have but I'll have to dig ... ) under fairly controlled lighting (a shady spot outside) and developing the film and then subsequent print - I'll be able to judge just how calibrated it all is by how close the print looks like the 18% grey card.

And that actually is a really good reason for figuring out how to calibrate my light meter myself.

So that test will come later tonight when it's dark out and I can develop some film ... but for now the meter is likely quite close in calibration and I am feeling much better about taking it (and the Westa!) to the Sierras ...

the anatomy of a conversion.

So a contact of mine left a comment on a photo in my Flickr stream that said something like 'I don't know how you achieved this result but this will be my sort of baseline for all my future BW works.' I thought that was nice. But also thought hmm, maybe I should post another Photoshop entry (uh, I'll try to make it not as long as the last one) - only this time go into the details about just how I get a black-and-white conversion out of a color image. The process I developed has been in the works for a while and gets updated with each new version of Photoshop because the tools and means to an end change of course so it will continue to evolve but I can detail the jist of it here and maybe someone will find it useful. Granted - it is not a quick press-a-button-and-you're-done process so takes a bit of patience, but the goal of it is to recreate a digital print (from a digital file on a digital printer like an Epson Ultrachrome inkjet) that gets close to the depth of tone that a print made on true RC or fiber photographic paper developed in a darkroom can. And of course this is just the image creation side of it - I am not going to even touch the printing part here.

So off I go ...

OK, first of all - the same thing applies to bw conversions from a capture side meaning no blown highlights or blocked shadows. You can shoot Zone System digitally but it's not necessary so long as you follow those two simple rules. For the photo I'm going to use as an example I actually got made fun of at the time I shot it by the only other dude who happened to be there with us (intruding on our solitude I might add but he was a nice enough fellow) when we were shooting - he said 'wow, you still use your grads!?' (graduated neutral-density filters just in case that wasn't obvious). To which I said of course and kept to myself shooting away. That way I was able to keep the brighter top-half of the image from blowing out while keeping all the detail in the darker foreground rocks and water. So let's start by looking at the raw capture and go from there.

It looks pretty flat but that's OK - we're only just beginning. I knew I wanted to convert this to black-and-white but I'm not sure why. I thought maybe it would work. But basically I apply the same procedure up until the point of conversion that I do for images that I do not convert (so see that other post linked above for details if you're really interested but be prepared it's long and probably too-detailed) - adjust the scene with some adjustment layers to bring in detail that I want etc. etc. blah blah blah to get this -

And then I convert. Well, not really - since in CS3 and beyond there is an adjustment layer called Black & White that you can use while keeping your image in RGB (the way they should be uploaded to Flickr BTW - if you create bw images to post to Flickr do not post greyscale images because Flickr assigns an RGB profile - probably sRGB I would assume - to it and the image then displays quite a bit darker than what you saw in Photoshop). Maximum flexibility, always.

So I just add a Black & White adjustment layer and adjust away -

It's pretty straightforward - the tones you want to darken move the slider to the left. To lighten, to the right. So for the skies, for instance, I moved the Blues slider -60 to the left. But I wanted to make sure the yellow larch trees were light (akin to using a yellow filter with film at the time of capture, which would have also slightly darkened the sky) so I bumped that slider up quite a bit. And so on to get this look -

That's decent I guess. And well, you could stop there but then you wouldn't get such nice comments on Flickr. OK, I am totally kidding. But there are a couple more steps I go through in order to tweak out that depth of tone I was trying to explain earlier.

First - I pull in some shape post-conversion using a curves layer set to Luminosity (remember, we're still in RGB mode) like this -

Leaving the 3/4 and shadow tones alone, but lightening the mids and 1/4-tones.

Then an old-school move from back in the darkroom days - dodge and burn. I understand the Dodge/Burn/Sponge tools in CS4 are much better so you do not have to do this workaround (because of a new feature called Protect Tones), but I'll describe the workaround because I have not thoroughly tested that out and the three people who actually read this and possibly find it useful might still be using CS3 or earlier.

So basically - create an empty layer above everything else and set the blending mode to Soft Light. Then choose the Brush tool and set the foreground/background colors to the default (black/white) by pressing 'D' (hitting 'X' swaps the foreground and background colors - useful in a second when you're swapping between dodging and burning). Black will burn; white will dodge. I tend to set the brush opacity pretty low - between 10-20% or the effect is too strong. You can of course do the brush at 100% and turn down the layer opacity, but that means the entire layer (so all your dodging/burning) will be the same opacity - whereas by tweaking the brush opacity rather than the layer you can dodge/burn some things in more than others etc.

Then just brush to your heart's desire - all the while pretending you are in a darkroom hunched over your enlarger in the dark with the stereo going upstairs and you're holding little metal wire hangers with pieces of cutout black paper attached or pieces of cardboard with various-sized holes cut out of them. And you get this -

And so there you have it. Oh, but wait a minute - this is only black and white. No additional tones (to confirm just do all of those steps and then hover over the image with the Eyedropper set to measure RGB values - the R, G and B values are all the same indicating only a single tone). But we want depth of tone (different R, G and B values for a given pixel) so we need to do something else. But what?

And here is the key ... a little hidden mode buried in the other image modes called Duotone. No, I do not plan on printing this lithographically with two plates. But thinking outside the box - we can apply a duotone (or a tri- or quad-tone) look without having to print traditionally offset. So let's take a look at what this does.

The trick here is we need to convert to greyscale first in order to proceed to a duotone. But before we do, I save this RGB file with all the layers as a PSD! We cannot go back from a greyscale conversion, so that step is very important. I create a second file then that will be the duotone version.

So to do this I make sure that my greyscale profile is what I need because when you choose Image/Mode/Greyscale - Photoshop converts your image to a single grey channel based on the greyscale profile you have setup in your Color Settings. OK - I don't want to lose anyone on this little bit of color management stuff - but for my greyscale profile I just use whatever CMYK profile I have chosen. Photoshop takes the profile and only uses the luminosity data from it - very cool and it's a little secret I came across a year or so ago. Yes - you can use one of Photoshop's standard greyscale profiles like 'Dot Gain 20%' or 'Grey Gamma 2.2' and your results will probably be OK. But I am posting my procedure that tries to eak out the very best conversion and that little step is key so try this if you're up for it. And with that goal in mind it means using a custom CMYK profile I built (you can download profiles for the media you use or pay a little bit for someone to make them for you) for the Epson printer I use - and thus using the luminosity data from that profile for my greyscale profile. Make sense?

It's OK if it doesn't - just follow this: all you do is go to your Color Settings (Edit/Color Settings) and in the Grey: menu choose to Load Grey -

Don't panic if you don't see this option - you need to make sure to have already checked the More Options button on the right (it says Fewer Options in the screenshot above because I already checked it). Apparently, if you do that Photoshop assumes you know what you're doing here and gives you the ability to load your own profiles. Which is what we want to do. Then you browse out to wherever you saved your CMYK profile and choose it (on a Mac - the path is Your User or HD folder/Library/ColorSync/Profiles; on a PC, it's something awesome like C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color - just what is 'system32' anyway ... ?).

This works even if you do not have a custom CMYK profile. You can use any CMYK profile (and Photoshop has to have one so you're using one whether you know it or not - it might just be something like U.S. Web Coated SWOP V2 etc.). You will just need to know where to browse to find it and load it - on a Mac, also try HD (for your hard drive)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Recommended - I'm getting off course a bit and diving deeper into color management than I want at the moment so getting back on track ...

Photoshop ignores all but the Luminosity data (like I said) on the fly and you're done. Now you're ready to convert to greyscale. So do that. And once you do, the option for duotone becomes available in the Image/Mode/ menu so I choose that -

to open this window -

And yes - I actually created a tritone (but play around with a duotone and even a quadtone if you're interested). The whole point is adding depth of tone of course (have I said that already) - and for me - without really changing the overall tone of the image (like a selenium or sepia tone, for example). Of course you could do that by choosing cooler or warmer colors (respectively) for your additional tones, but my goal is just more depth of the existing tone so I choose neutral colors albeit ones that are slightly (ever so) on the warm side as I tend to prefer a slightly warmer print to a cooler one (but that is just me).

So to get to this point and choose your color(s), simply click on the color boxes to the left of the name box. This brings up the various libraries that Photoshop can use to spec an ink/tone for you (this is because duotones are supposed to be used to create a file with a certain number of channels/plates for printing on press). I use the Pantone Coated library but feel free to experiment. For those not familiar with the Pantone libraries - you'll see there are lots of colors from which to choose. If you were going for a selenium look you might choose a cool blue swatch like 294 C -

For Sepia, maybe 130 C. For a cool grey feel, 423 C or Pantone Cool Grey 7 C. There are also Pantone Warm Grey options. Lots and lots of options. But any of them in addition to the Black channel will give the image more depth of tone. The key is to choose a color that does not significantly add weight (or density, whatever you want to call it) to the image - requiring an adjustment be made to the duotone curves (the box to the left of the color box in the duotone window). Once you've chosen one color - try adding a third and possibly a fourth. And based on the colors you choose, you may or may not have to adjust the curves for the additional colors (I did slightly for the 414 C - taking out just a bit in the midtones and 10% in the shadows) -

Warning: this can get complicated. So try to avoid it like I mentioned by choosing light enough colors. The way the Pantone library is set up is that each 'set' so-to-speak of seven colors is all the same Hue but have varying degrees of Lightness so once you land on a set of hues that you like, you can simply pick the one swatch of the seven that - when applied to your image - does not lighten or darken it in such a way that you would have to edit the curves. Little tip.

But if you do edit the curves - one thing that is very cool is that you can save those duotone options/curves by clicking on the little box to the right of the Preset name at the top of the duotone window. Choose Save Preset and save it somewhere (the default on a Mac is your user account/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Photoshop (version)/Presets/Duotones/ - sorry PC users, I avoid PCs like the plague and have absolutely no idea where Windows puts things like this - all I know is it is very likely not somewhere that is in the slightest bit intuitive like what it does with color profiles - OK I'm done I promise .... ). You can then load it by clicking that same little box for any images that you want to make into a duotone with those same presets. You can even make an action but this little procedure is fairly hands-on so even I haven't gone to that extent (that and I do not convert all that many images).

Well, we now have a duotoned (or more) image. The last thing that I did was add one more shape layer to pull out just a bit of weight in the midtones (ever-so-slight) -

And then I am done -

So I save this second file and add the word _duo or _tri or whatever to the filename and it stays in duotone mode. So I have the master RGB file, the saved duotone curves and the duotone file. For Flickr, there is one last step - convert back to RGB. So again, the only way to do so from a duotone-mode image is to go to the Image/Mode menu and choose RGB Color. So again, I make sure my RGB profile is what I want to convert to so I do not have to convert a second time after changing modes! In this case, since I will be uploading an RGB version to Flickr, I make sure my RGB working space is sRGB. Then I switch the mode (if the Merge warning dialog comes up because you have layers like I do - choose to merge). Then downsample so I am not uploading a hi-res to the web and done.

Printing is an entirely different subject.

The result when printed is not a print made from an enlarger through an analog process of filters and lightbulbs and smelly chemistry (all of which are good, mind you) - but it comes close. Awfully close - if anything, it just lacks that analog feel that cannot be described. But it has depth of tone - a success - more so than an image simply converted to black and white and left to be. And maybe this post was shorter than the other one. Or maybe not. So props to anyone who actually read this far (and without skipping to the very end to read this last sentence).

cheers

the anatomy of an image.

Okay I have never done this before and this is admittedly sort of giving away some secrets but maybe someone who reads this (does anyone actually read this? quien sabe) might find it helpful. I have certainly written enough blogs (or maybe not) for a group on Flickr that kind of discuss in some detail various aspects of color management and using it in Photoshop and raw workflows and such. And apparently I'm doing a presentation at the worldwide PIA Color Management Conference in Phoenix this year on color-managed raw workflows so this ties in nicely and maybe I'll just flash up this blog post at the conference and take off for Zion.

But anyways, I'm going to dissect a recent photo I took when J and I backpacked to Cathedral Peak a month ago on our annual pilgrimage-of-a-summer-vacation to the hot and sunny state of California to bask in the Sierras. Maybe this will be useful to see how much (but really how little) is done to an image to take it from being 'eh' to hopefully at least slightly more than 'eh.'

First of all, I still have to blog about our vacation. But just for this post I am going to throw out there I have wanted to backpack to Cathedral for a few years namely because it is just an über-picturesque peak. It's weird how certain mountains are just beautiful while others are just, well, not. Cathedral is beautiful. Probably one of the most spectacular peaks in the Sierras–at least in my humble opinion, but I have far from traveled throughout the Sierras so many might disagree. Anyways. It is.

So the story goes that on this trip (and this is the short version) I left the rainfly back in Oliver's trunk gambling that it would not rain. A thunderstorm overtook Cathedral that afternoon. I set up the tent as far under a clump of trees as I could until it (the storm, not the tent thankfully) blew over. We stayed mostly dry. The storm broke up around five in the afternoon. The sky was full of, well, quite incredible clouds. The light was for lack of a better term, um, stellar. About seven J and I took off to a) find a good spot for reflection shots of Cathedral for later in the evening and then b) scramble up eight- or nine-hundred feet along a ridge that overlooked Cathedral Lake, Tenaya Lake and the high Sierra in every direction. I took some pictures of the mountains and of J. Like this. And this. J took one. I asked him after why he didn't take more!? He didn't really know. Maybe he was too busy climbing. After that bit of fun, we hurried back down to set up the tripod and await the show.

Uh, and what a show. It's funny looking through my collection on Bridge cos you can see in the tiny thumbnail filmstrip how the light went from good to better to best. Or from blue to pink to purple. When it was all done, J and I wound our way back around the trail to our campsite to sit on a rock and watch as the light on Cathedral faded more and more to just about completely dark before we made our way back to the tent. It was an incredible evening and one I know I will not and hopefully he will not soon forget.

But anyways, so onto the image at hand. For which I just aimed at Cathedral and pointed. I had nothing to do with the light. I swear. And just a couple of things to keep in mind before I dive into it:

• I try to keep my Photoshop work fairly consistent for my landscapes and at a minimum because ...
• a good shot requires a, um, good shot–which is just to say shoot it right when you're there so you start with a good file that just needs some slight tweaking like making sure nothing is blown out (or only slightly blown out because you can recover some of it in Photoshop)
• shoot in raw–yes, do not shoot JPEGs if you really care and your camera can shoot raw (I'll attempt to show there's lots of things you can do in Camera Raw that might be surprising)
• for morning/evening/reflection shots there is little chance of actually not blowing something out or blocking up shadows without either a) using graduated neutral density filters (as I did for this shot) or b) shooting multiple exposures–I do not attempt to shoot multiple exposures (bracketing in-camera) because things tend to move (like the water in this shot might have)
• if you don't have one already go out and get a polarizer filter–there, I said it–and use it for just about every shot you take, especially of water and skies (here, you can see the bottom of the lake because the polarizer cuts through the glare off the water and really brings out detail you would never get without one–the current version of Photoshop cannot create the bottom of Cathedral Lake)
• use adjustment layers–never ever ever make an adjustment without one

Okay, that was way too preachy. I take it all back. Do and shoot as you please of course, but that's just what I do and did for this shot to get what I got. But like I said I just point and shoot. Sometimes get lucky.

So onward we go, starting with the original capture (meaning not yet adjusted in Adobe Camera Raw–ACR from here on out) and histogram (click on any of the following images to open a larger version) -

Notice the composite (RGB) diagram at top–nothing blown out, nothing plugged up. I shot this with a circular polarizer and a 0.9 (3-stop) graduated soft-edge neutral density filter (well, actually 0.3- and 0.6-stop filters combined) on a tripod. And since I'm getting this granular, what the heck–it was shot at f11 for 0.5 seconds at ISO 100 using a Canon IS 18-55mm lens on a Canon 20D (in raw mode of course, no extra JPEG). My workflow then consists of downloading all my .CR2 raw Canon files to a folder and then pointing the Adobe DNG Converter to convert them all to open-source .dng files (as opposed to the lame proprietary Canon files). Once they're converted, I move the .dng files into my folder hierarchy on my server which more or less mirrors the folder structure the 20D creates (a hundred files per folder–like 0400-0499 etc.). The server is backed up daily to a large firewire drive with the help of SuperDuper! (the best Mac backup software hands-down). I dump the .CR2 files because I'm no pro and could never think of a reason to keep them but I can see why someone might. I then go through Bridge and choose my 'selects' by marking them with a certain number of stars (uh, this one originally got 3 but was bumped up to 4 after I finished editing it). Then I open the .dng into ACR and start–this is what it looks like after that little journey through ACR which I will explain in a moment-

A bit better. Basically, I have just optimized the capture. An important element here and you might notice the icon of the IMG_0943 layer with the little paper-with-folded-over-corner? That is a Smart Object icon and a key component of my workflow. In CS3, there is a setting you can select in ACR that opens all files as Smart Objects by clicking on the Workflow Options link at the bottom of the ACR window. Turn it on. And leave it on. It rules. And what it allows you to do is double-click that icon which then takes you back into ACR to make any further adjustments necessary. Flexibility to any workflow is key, and Smart Objects are the epitome of flexibility. But what I did in ACR–starting with the Basic tab–is as follows (and I'll just move through the different tabs from left to right, basically the workflow I would recommend and why it is set up the way it is) -

I have noticed that since Canon cameras rule they require no adjustment of the temp and tint unless you want to be creative. But I don't usually touch them. What I do is adjust the exposure to make sure my histogram stretches from end to end as can be seen in either picture above or below.

I then adjust the parametric tone curve like that shown above. The point curve is leftover from ACR versions past so I never touch it. Parametric = much more powerful. You can move the triangles at the bottom to refine what ACR adjusts as shadows, darks, lights and highlights. I tend not to mess much with the highlight end of the spectrum because I want to maintain detail in clouds and such.

Okay, the Detail tab above is key. Now it can be debated where and when to do your sharpening and I have been using and testing versions of ACR since 1.0 and the various sharpening filters in Photoshop for a long time (namely, the Unsharp Mask of days ago and the newer Smart Sharpen). I used to never sharpen in ACR (it's a preference setting in ACR–you can choose to either sharpen the preview only or to sharpen the image itself) but I played with it in ACR v4 (now 4.6) and it blew me away. After some testing, I found that in the Detail settings I was able to dial in a sharpening amount that worked beautifully with the full-resolution files from my 20D. So much that I made a preset in ACR that is automatically applied to every .dng file I open from that camera -

It's easy to do by clicking the arrow at the top-right of the tabbed window (to the right of the name of the tab) and choosing to 'Save Settings.' This saves an XML file that you can then pass around and apply as part of the default settings ACR uses when opening your image files (which is done by going to that same arrow and–once you have the settings dialed the way you want as the default–choosing to 'Save New Camera Raw Defaults'). That way everything gets sharpened perfectly and I never have to do a thing.

Then onto one of the most powerful tabs in ACR (v4.x–unfortunately not in earlier versions)–the HSL tab -

So for this image I did not adjust any of the hues, but did adjust some saturation as shown above, and some luminance settings as shown below -

What is so cool about this is ACR targets any of those eight hues and it is mighty powerful being able to adjust the hue, saturation and luminance of any of them. If you want more detailed info it's all in these articles I wrote so I'm not going into a ton more detail here or else this post will be really long and probably somewhat boring (although if you've read this far props). But I will point out to remember that the reason this stuff is so powerful is due to the fact that you are working on a linear file at this point–it has not been converted to a non-linear file like a JPEG/TIF/PSD. So adjusting the luminance of, say–the blues–is not only non-destructive in ACR but also linear so the effect it has is much, much different (and cleaner = less banding/noise) than doing so with a curve or levels adjustment in Photoshop.

Okay, last but not least in ACR I tweaked the cyan/red-blue/yellow fringing (and yes, this is another huge benefit of working in ACR because this cannot be done nearly as well in Photoshop) as shown below -

Notice the new feature in v4–the option to defringe all edges. Do it. I haven't noticed any ill effects and it works like a charm. Really. But you can turn it off or have it just defringe the highlight edges as well.

Okay, so that takes us through all the raw edits in ACR to get to the second image above. Now it's time to do some (minor) tweaking in Photoshop that we can't do in ACR (yet–my guess is it is just a matter of time even though there is and will always be the difference of linear vs. non-linear).

One key ingredient about color management that I did not point out (well, until now)–I always convert my .dng files from raw to Photoshop using the ProPhoto RGB color space (you'll notice in the bottom left corner of the Photoshop window). It is the largest color space and allows me to keep as many of the colors as my 20D's image sensor captured. Any other space will throw away more colors, but this is of course just another preference of mine. In ACR, you can choose Adobe RGB, sRGB and Colormatch (uh, yeah–never use that one unless you like really flat, desaturated photos).

So the first thing I do is to dupe my Smart Object layer by right-clicking it and choosing 'New Smart Object via Copy' from the contextual menu and run a Shadows/Highlights adjustment on it that gets the image to this point -

Have I not mentioned that Smart Objects are sweet? Well, Smart Filters are, um, just as sweet. In days of old, if you wanted to run a powerful filter like Shadows/Highlights you had to dupe your background layer (doubling your file size). And once you ran the filter, it was done. Now, you can just dupe the Smart Object layer (just a layer, not the same as doubling your image size), run the filter, apply a mask to the filter, choose a blending mode and–if you decide to change your mind on the settings–just double-click the Shadows/Highlights in the layers panel and it opens up the settings for you to adjust. In addition (yes, there's more) you can double-click the little triangles to the right of the Shadow/Highlights layer name which opens up a blending options dialog. This allows you to blend the filter with any of Photoshop's twenty-seven blending modes. That is way powerful. Check it out.

But back to the filter itself–now I know Shadows/Highlights might seem crazy and intimidating but it doesn't have to be. Really what it does is increases dynamic range (giving your image additional stops of light-dark) by compressing both ends (the shadows and highlights, hence the name). I look at images that Ansel Adams took and am mesmerized by the tone values he was able to print–this was because he developed his film and paper using über-advanced techniques he came up with that allowed him up to ten stops of light-dark vs. five or six which is what is typical from digital and even transparency captures.

But all that to say the Shadows/Highlights adjustment is crazy-powerful and probably just about completely overlooked. But anyways, here are the settings I used for this image -

The settings I used are not super-important–just play around with them. You can create some crazy HDR-looking effects by tweaking them a lot, but I am all about subtle tweaks (the same for the Recovery and Fill Light sliders in ACR–they do roughly the same thing as Shadows/Highlights).

Oh, quick–to get all of these options make sure the 'Show More Options' checkbox is checked. And once you dial in some settings you like, choose to 'Save As Defaults' at the bottom of the adjustment window. But basically what I was after it to do was to open up the shadow detail and give slightly more detail in the highlights. Perfect. Moving on.

The next thing I do is to clone anything that annoys me. Like in this case and as shown above, the dude walking on the rocks and his tent. Gone. Now unfortunately I missed the fact that the two dead trees at left bugged me until I had made a bunch of adjustments, so that layer is called 'clone_trees' and we'll get to it in a bit.

Anyways, sticking with small tweaks I took out some blue saturation on the rocks that are in shadow on the left as shown below -

Then–and this is where it helps to maybe have some sort of photographic vision for the shot because really the image looks just fine now (at least in my opinion) but I felt like it would look a little better if I lightened the reflection along the edge of the water like this -

OK, more detail about that move. This involved creating an empty Levels adjustment layer (by 'empty' I mean one where I did not actually do anything to the Levels–I just created the layer and then used it to set a blending mode. In this case, I used the Screen setting (which can be seen just under the 'Layers' panel name at top right), which just subtracts pixel values of the top layer from all of the layers beneath. I don't know, feel free to think it looked better without lightening it. I did take the adjustment down by lowering the opacity from the default 100% to 40% (remembering my motto of just minor tweaks) as shown just to the right of the blending mode.

Of course there is also a layer mask involved here, which I created by just creating a rectangular marquee from the bottom of the image to the water line, taking the selection into Quick Mask and blurring it 10 pixels with the Gaussian blur filter and then applying a vertical black-to-white gradient from the bottom to the top of the selection. This created a mask that only lightened the water near the water line and leaving the bottom of the image untouched.

What I could have additionally done was invert the selection, take it into Quick Mask and use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the top half (which would leave just a gradient from mid-water to the bottom of the frame) and then do a Multiply layer (like what I did with the sky below) and bring down the opacity so it just slightly darkens the bottom of the water (although I would also mask off the green grass at bottom right). That would give it a slightly more pronounced look.

But anyways, in order to bring back some shape after extending the dynamic range with the Shadows/Highlights adjustment, I do two things–add black (for contrast) back in using a Selective Color adjustment layer like this -

which makes the image look like this (putting black back in the shadows after opening them up with Shadows/Highlights) -

and then do another empty Levels layer–this time set to blend using Soft Light which just darkens all pixels less-than a value of 128 (which is just middle grey in the scale from 0-255) and lightens pixel values greater than 128 to give it this look (it also increases the effect of the reflection in the water you might notice beyond just giving everything slightly more contrast) -

Okay, getting there.

But just like Ansel Adams–who tweaked his negatives a ton in the darkroom–I like dramatic skies, so I darkened the sky up by first creating a mask that lets the layer just tweak the sky and then using the Multiply blending mode on yet another blank Levels layer -

The mask was created by using the Rectangular Marquee tool to select from the horizon line up, then going in with the Color Range selection tool to select the blue in the sky. Do not use the Magic Wand tool. Ever. Again. To lessen the effect along the horizon and give it a more natural look, I then applied a vertical gradient to the sky mask so that along the horizon the multiply effect did nothing and increased as it went up.

Next (we're almost done, really) I wanted to give a little more shape to the granite by slightly lightening the quarter-tones. I did this using a Curves adjustment layer set to the Luminosity blending mode so that only the L values (the Lightness values, in other words) are effected–meaning no color change is made, which would be the case if the mode was left to Normal.

The curve simply darkens the 3/4 tones while lightening the mid- and quarter-tones to give the granite this look -

And then I noticed the image looked a little lighter on the right side than the left, probably because of where the sun was hitting. So this is just totally my opinion but I thought I should darken the right side slightly to even the image out as a whole. I did this by using another adjustment layer set to Multiply and created a crazy gradient mask by combining two gradients (one right-to-left gradient and one from top-to-bottom) -

Notice the opacity is set to 30%–just a minor adjustment. The reason for the up-down gradient was I did not want to darken the green clump of grass at the bottom right corner.

And then lastly–it finally hit me (duh) that the two dead trees on the left sort of stuck out so I cloned them out (and, um, making sure to include removing their reflections) -

Oh–and just one more tweak ... boosting the yellow and green saturation each by a smidge (just 10%) using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer of the Yellows and Greens with a layer mask created by using the Color Range selection tool (did I mention to never use the Magic Wand? Seriously. It is all about Color Range) -

And then I added my cheesy watermark for all of those who like to download images from the web to use as their desktop (no worries, but they either have to know how to clone or live with my name on their desktop so there) -

And there you have it. And just so you don't have to scroll back to the top–raw from the camera (like what you would get if you shot JPEG) looked like this -

None of the adjustments were big–no huge moves by any of them (the biggest change was from as-shot to the edited raw file from within ACR). But cumulatively–they add up to take the shot from immediately above to the one above that.

And that is the anatomy of an image.