PHOTO: Blue Skies Problem

I have to be very careful when shooting blue skies due to noise and artifacting. What are some of the solutions that some of you use to aviod this. I feel sometimes I'm so consumed with not getting artifacting that it spoils my creativity.


I have exposed to keep the histogram to the left. When I usually don't have artifacting the image seems very flat. Gaussian Blur only causes a banding problem for me. I was wondering what some of the other contributers workflow would be on an image like this.

Here


Any help would be greatly appreciated.





Nick

(Edited on 2010-05-14 18:30:48 by nickphoto13)

Can someone explain to me how to put a link to the image or post it in the forum.

Link


Type a word or sentence, select it and then click the link icon in the WYSIWYG editor toolbar. Paste the URL into the dialog box


You will generally have the worst problems with blue skies if you underexpose them. In general, with digitial cameras, you do better to expose to the right - overexpose slightly - and then recover any highlight detail, if necessary, in the RAW converter.


You can use a noise reduction tool (like Noise Ninja) if needed on a separate layer, masked to avoid smudging the details in the clouds, if needed, but you can generally avoid that if the exposure is right.


The image you posted also has lots of chromatic aberration that should be cleaned up - it's everywhere on the high contrast edges, but you can most easily spot it on the edges of the shells/pebbles on the sand


You'll generally get a sharper picture at f/11 or f/8 than f/14 - tiny apertures give you more dof but less sharpness. Nothing to do with artifacts, but just a suggestion.

If you are gettting problems, shoot at 100 ISO (or as low as you camera goes, 200 ISO or whatever), expose the photo correctly and make only minor exposure /curves /levels etc adjustments. Blue skies have a narrow range of tones and a smooth texture, so excessive photoshop processing shows up really easily.

How are you processing this image?

I opened it in cr and did minor adjustments. I used a slight highlight reduction and the a noiseware professional on a layer masked for just the sky.


Wdstock what would you recommend.


Thanks for all you responses.


Nick

Your original is quite underexposed, maybe a stop or more.


With a scene like this, exposure should be easy - the tail of the histogram should extend to the right edge of the graph, so the brightest part of the white clouds will be just about pure white. I would adjust the exposure so there is a little bit of clipping of the highlights, then shoot at 1/3 of a stop less exposure than this.

I agree that your image is a stop underexposed. You also have a good deal of vignetting going on which may be your lens. Did you process this image at all? The sky looks oversaturated.

Thanks.





I'll try that.

I use Canon's DPP, but plenty of folks use ACR. I guess my only point would be that unless your pushing exposure a lot (close to a stop) or boosting saturation, I don't think you should be having noise problems with that camera at ISO100.

OP >> I have exposed to keep the histogram to the left.


The usual advice is to expose to the right... (well, it is for digital, unlike film)...

Thanks I was backwards with my left and right, I meant exposed to the right. In camera raw I use the option key Mac to check the exposure to make sure I am not losing any detail. I remember a year ago when I was just shooting for clients I did not notice that much noise or artifacting in skies and shadow areas because I was not looking specifically for it. Now I am paranoid about it so I think I see it sometimes and it is not even a problem.





Thanks again for all your responses.


These critiques will help me fine tune my photography.


Nick