Cleaning up photos like these...

[wingflapp]

Hi guys. I took this picture from the top of a hill, obviously looking down to the valley below. It was a hazy day for landscape pictures. In fact, Mt Fuji was 180 degrees behind me, but it was so hazy it was barely more than a grey silhouette.



Anyway, as you can see, the picture has lots of haze in it. I realize there is a great deal of 'it is what it is' when composing, and I knew the shot would come out something like it is here. Still, what advice can you give to someone wanting to make a hazy picture look a little better? I feel like the colors are muted. (I also can see that the buildings and the foreground leaves are too bright, but I can try to handle that when I adjust the highlights).

What reading does DPS suggest?

Thanks in advance,

Wing.

[edbayani]

Try levels adjustment. Move the left slider past the area where the histogram starts to rise. You will see a marked improvement.

[ArmySoldier777]

Well, as you already said, there's only so much that can be done to fix something that naturally looks the way it is. If the haze is there, the haze is there lol. Although a Polarizing filter can be a huge help with the image SOOC before it ever gets too the PP stage.

That being said, a simple curves adjustment can do wonders for this. Decreased the shadows as well as slightly decreased the midtones and played with the highlights a little bit. This takes away some of that haze. Then I went into the blue channel curve and lowered the midtones. I'll post the results below

Levels adjustments can give you decent results for some images, but you don't have as much control as with a curves adjustment. I used to use levels before I learned about curves "If you read around, you'll find that's where a lot of people start because the curves adjustment can seem overbearing to some people", but once you learn how to properly adjust curves, it can completely change your images. Keep in mind though, that you can only take a poor image SOOC so far It definitely helps to get it right the first time. If you get a chance to retake this one and it's during a harsh light time of day again, I'd either use a polarizing filter, or do bracketed shots to create a subtle HDR

[wingflapp]

Originally Posted by edbayani

Try levels adjustment. Move the left slider past the area where the histogram starts to rise. You will see a marked improvement.

Definitely a quick and easy improvement there.... Thanks so much for the input.

[wingflapp]

Originally Posted by ArmySoldier777

Well, as you already said, there's only so much that can be done to fix something that naturally looks the way it is. If the haze is there, the haze is there lol. Although a Polarizing filter can be a huge help with the image SOOC before it ever gets too the PP stage.

That being said, a simple curves adjustment can do wonders for this. Decreased the shadows as well as slightly decreased the midtones and played with the highlights a little bit. This takes away some of that haze. Then I went into the blue channel curve and lowered the midtone as well as the highlight areas. I'll post the results below

Levels adjustments can give you decent results for some images, but you don't have as much control as with a curves adjustment. I used to use levels before I learned about curves "If you read around, you'll find that's where a lot of people start because the curves adjustment can seem overbearing to some people", but once you learn how to properly adjust curves, it can completely change your images. Keep in mind though, that you can only take a poor image SOOC so far It definitely helps to get it right the first time. If you get a chance to retake this one and it's during a harsh light time of day again, I'd either use a polarizing filter, or do bracketed shots to create a subtle HDR

Just wanted to say I am studying on this right now. As you said, it's a bit to absorb, but clearly your picture shows it works wonders. I may have a question or 2 for you later!

[ArmySoldier777]

Originally Posted by wingflapp

Just wanted to say I am studying on this right now. As you said, it's a bit to absorb, but clearly your picture shows it works wonders. I may have a question or 2 for you later!

You'll be glad you did, it's a great tool to know. And feel free to ask whatever questions you come up with I'm sure if there's something I don't know, one of these other insightful members will know it.

[ArmySoldier777]

Here's an excerpt from a conversation between me and wingflapp after my previous post, where I tried to answer a few of his questions regarding curves, what they do, and why they do what they do. As I mentioned in my message to him, I'm not an expert, and some of you may have a better understanding on it than I was able to express, and I'm sure he'd be glad to hear it as would I. For those of you who have some similar questions as to what he did, then feel free to read the following and I hope it helps you



"""

Originally Posted by wingflapp

Just wanted to touch bases with you on that instruction you gave me on 'curves'.

I did what I could to recreate what you showed me, and I definitely got the result you shared. HOWEVER, .... I really didn't know what I was doing. Just following along really.

My assumptions : The lower left adjustment was the shadows, the upper right adjustment was the highlights, and the middle adjustment was the mid tones. Is that accurate?

Adjusting RGB means I'm adjusting all of the colors in the entire picture? (Conversely, adjusting the blue channel only affected the blues?)

Your water looks much blue-er than mine, so decreasing the blues also confused me a bit.

I can certainly use this in the future. I'm sure I will alot, actually.... BUT... I simply don't understand what it is that I did to make the haze disappear, or why the changes I made had that effect on the photo.

Any information you can give me (or reading assignment) would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks in Advance!

Steve.

Your assumptions are completely correct . Now that you know what the general areas do, I would take that same image and slowly play with the adjustments so you can visually see what changes are being made. Even take them to the extremes so you can get a feel for just how much they can do. Being a hands on learner, that's how I got a deeper understanding of them. I tried it on multiple images, and as time went on, my grasp on it grew.

As far as the RGB statement goes, yes. As you know, the 3 basic colors of light are Red, Green, and Blue. So editing all three at once allow you to edit the image's overall lighting.

Adjusting the Blue - As you noticed, adjusting the RGB allowed you to cut through most of the haze right? But the haze that was left over was a pretty strong blue. That's why I chose to alter the blue channel. By decreasing that blue light, I was able to significantly wipe away a lot of that blue haze. It's still there, it's just not as prominent now that it blends into the rest of the colors in the image better. As for my water being bluer than yours, that could be a couple of things. My shadows adjustment in my RGB could be slightly lower than yours allowing for a deeper color, or my Blue channel may be slightly different. If you find that it's too Green, you can go into the Green curves channel and take it down just a tiny tiny bit. If you take it down too much, the Red light will become prominent.

And for your last question, THIS is a tough one, as I've never found any reading on WHY it works, just on how to do it. Here's my guess though. The mist or haze is usually in the midtones to highlights part of the histogram. Therefore, by decreasing the midtones and sometimes the highlights in the Curves adjustment, you're significantly reducing the appearance of the haze. And as I said before, most of the Haze that's left over lies in the Blue channel light, so by decreasing that, you're wiping out a lot of what you can see in the haze.

I hope this helps a little bit, and be sure to let me know if you have any questions. While I'm definitely not an expert, I do have a basic grasp of the concepts behind it and "what does what" as far as curves go. If you don't mind, I'm going to post this conversation in the original thread incase anybody else has similar questions. I know when I was first starting out, parts of what I just told you would've seemed like a foreign language to me lol.

Another thing to keep in mind. When you're working on an image with heavy haze and the sky is visible, be sure to mask out the sky so that you're not affecting any of the coloration in it. Infact, you can also do the exact opposite and mask out everything but the sky to increase the blue channel in it."""


I want to add something else that wasn't put in the PM. If you're using Photoshop, it's a good idea to do your Curves adjustments as a Curves Adjustment Layer, instead of going to Images>Adjustments>Curves. Doing the latter, gives you one shot at it. once you click ok, then those changes are permanent and once you open up the Curves adjustments again, it's back to being a straight line because what's on the image has become the default. Of course it's always a good idea to be working on a copy of your background instead of the base layer, as you can adjust opacity if something you do seems to be too strong, or you can just delete the layer entirely, starting over from your beginning image. However, working with an actual Curves Adjustment Layer retains the information from each curves adjustment that you do to the image, allowing you to keep fine tuning it. It also gives more control over how the Curves Adjustment is applied to the overall image.