Does the Horizon Line in the middle make this a bad picture?

[JFSanders]

Vince is pretty spot on. This adjustment can be made in LR3 or CS5. LR3 will give you sliders in the White Balance side bar and CS5 gives you eye droppers to pick the pixels that should be those values. Now with that said there is a caveat. Isn't there always a caveat! You can set your minimum and maximum values at a number that is not 0 or 255. And for most color spaces used, especially those on the internet blacks will present better at around 6 or so and white somewhere around 250 and sometimes less.

The way to make this easy on you is to use the histogram function to see the minimum and maximum values recorded by the camera and then you set the black point by sliding the slider to just touch the lowest pixel recorded. Then you slide the white to just touch the highest point recorded.

I do this in NX2 and the screen shot looks like this. I slide the black till it just touches the lowest recorded value and then a black pixel shows up on the image. I then magnify in and set the black point on that pixel and it then recalculates the image through out the image. Repeat for the white point.

The grey point is trickier, especially if there is no really grey pixels in the image. Then you have to go by eye. Play with the image and see what happens. Not only will you learn the ins and outs of the program but it may give you some easter eggs that the programmers don't even know about.

Jim

[autofocus]

Like everything else in Photoshop, if there's one way to do something you can be sure there's probably 5 more ways to get the same, or similar end results. Jim already covered a few of them above, so here's a few more:
Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels (or Curves) In Levels, that good old histogram will pop up. You will find three eye droppers on the bottom of the graph. The left is for the black point, the right is for the white point, and the middle one is for the midtones. Once you determine the general area that is the blackest (or near black) take your left eye dropper and click it on that point. That will set your new black point. Do the same thing with your right eye dropper on the white point in the image. You can fish around these points until you are happy with the results. Not only will this give your photo more pop, but will often help correct the skin tones. If you do this in curves, you will see the same three eye droppers on the bottom of the curves palette. Being that you created a layer, you now can make one final adjustment with the opacity slider in the layers palette to tweak it if necessary. Finish by flattening the layer..Done.

[sk66]

To answer the question, no, the horizon in the middle does not make this a bad picture....It's a very nice picture.
I prefer the original to having the sky cropped.....I might actually prefer a little more sky and a little less foreground.

[nicko97]

Originally Posted by sk66

To answer the question, no, the horizon in the middle does not make this a bad picture....It's a very nice picture.
I prefer the original to having the sky cropped.....I might actually prefer a little more sky and a little less foreground.

Thank you, I'm getting really great feedback on this. I actually like the rocks on the bottom and how they cure around. I didn't want to lose them when making a crop.

[nicko97]

Jim and Vince thank your for taking the time to explain the black and white points. This is great information and I never heard of the black and white point before making this post. Vince those extra instructions really helped I was able to follow them and make the adjustment in CS5. I also figured out how to make them in lightroom. You hold down the option key and exposure slider to find the white point and to find the black point you use the black slider.

I'm still not sure on middle grey. I tried using the middle eye dropper but it didn't work out. How do you find the middle point? Could you provide a little more detail on how you adjust the the clouds.

Thanks,
Mark

[nicko97]

Originally Posted by autofocus

Like everything else in Photoshop, if there's one way to do something you can be sure there's probably 5 more ways to get the same, or similar end results. Jim already covered a few of them above, so here's a few more:
Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels (or Curves) In Levels, that good old histogram will pop up. You will find three eye droppers on the bottom of the graph. The left is for the black point, the right is for the white point, and the middle one is for the midtones. Once you determine the general area that is the blackest (or near black) take your left eye dropper and click it on that point. That will set your new black point. Do the same thing with your right eye dropper on the white point in the image. You can fish around these points until you are happy with the results. Not only will this give your photo more pop, but will often help correct the skin tones. If you do this in curves, you will see the same three eye droppers on the bottom of the curves palette. Being that you created a layer, you now can make one final adjustment with the opacity slider in the layers palette to tweak it if necessary. Finish by flattening the layer..Done.

Hi Vince, I just did the black & white point on a image of my son and I can see that it does make a difference with skin tones. This is really great stuff.

Thanks,
Mark

[JFSanders]

Mark, if you look at your original image and follow the horizon to the right, at the right edge is a section of clouds that are almost mid grey. If you blow up that section to say 150% and then set your grey dropper on those grey pixels it should bring the clouds and sky into the blue range. Every program does the calculations a bit different as they use different algorithms. So you have to play with it a bit.

Jim

[autofocus]

Originally Posted by nicko97

Hi Vince, I just did the black & white point on a image of my son and I can see that it does make a difference with skin tones. This is really great stuff.

Thanks,
Mark

Mark, like Jim noted earlier, there are some caveats when you make these black and white adjustments. You need to watch your histogram to make sure your histogram graph doesn't go off the chart on either side. It's very easy to blowout details or really block up the shadows if you use a heavy hand. Depending on the image, there are times I'll only use the white eyedropper for enough pop and color correction, and skip using the black.

[nicko97]

Originally Posted by JFSanders

Mark, if you look at your original image and follow the horizon to the right, at the right edge is a section of clouds that are almost mid grey. If you blow up that section to say 150% and then set your grey dropper on those grey pixels it should bring the clouds and sky into the blue range. Every program does the calculations a bit different as they use different algorithms. So you have to play with it a bit.

Jim

Thanks Jim, I wasn't sure if you were using the eye dropper or something else. I did try using it but not on the location you circled. Now that I used that section I can see how it impacted the water and brought out more of the color.

Thanks again I've learned a lot from this post.
Mark