High Contrast Landscape - Using Lightroom 2 to correct WB for Sun/Shade split

[viking79]

Blog Entry: Behind the Glass Eye: Recovering a Partly Shaded Landscape using Lightroom 2


http://www.flickr.com/photos/28177041@N03/3831621893/
EXIF: Pentax K-7 with DA 21mm f/3.2 Limited @ 1/60, f/7.1, ISO 100.

Text from Blog:

I am posting a video blog today. In the following video I use Lightroom 2 in order to create the above landscape from a single RAW file. The main challenge with this image was the heavily shaded bottom portion of the image. This video addresses how to fix the differing white balances between the background in the sun and the foreground in the shade. I did use a polarizer with this shot too.

I used a technique known as Expose to the Right (ETTR) with UniWB to properly expose the original RAW file to get the most out of the highlights as I possibly could. The UniWB is basically just a setting where the camera balances the JPG to closely match what the sensor sees, so the histograms, at least the dark and bright points match what is in the RAW file. This allows the in camera histogram to be used to accurately expose the RAW to the right without accidentally clipping data. The normal JPG preview doesn't match the RAW data closely at all.

Link to video tutorial: YouTube - Sun / Shade Landscape in Lightroom 2

The main issue I had with this image was after boosting the exposure in the shade, the white balance of the shade is drastically different than that of the sun, so there is a color temperature difference between the two areas of the photograph. In the video I show how to correct for that.

Thanks for looking!

Eric

My Blog: Behind the Glass Eye