Painted Hills

Description:

This is from 9 years ago, in a section of the John Day fossil beds in eastern OR. Back in the day, I hadn’t been able to get the colors I wanted so decided to have another look with newer software and a better monitor. In particular, I wanted to try the TK linear profiles. The dynamic range was not extreme but it was shot as an HDR, possibly to test the limits of the camera and software of the day.

Specific Feedback Requested:

All comments welcome!

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

Canon 5D2, 70-200 f/2.8, ISO 400, f/8, 3 exposures at 1/1000 to 1/250 sec. (No idea why so high. Wind??) I converted each of the 3 subs to linear and did the LR Merge to HDR. After working this up I read in a post by Kris Smith that that wasn’t the intended use of the profiles, but I left it as it was. This is just right out of LR with tweaks to the tone sliders. I also worked on the middle exposure but was not able to get the nice detail and color in the shadows.

Is this a composite? No

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I think the image look great! The colors and the framing are very good. It looks almost like a giants foot.! Just curious about the yellow parts, is this the color of the hill or due to the sunlight or something in the processing?

Diane
I really like how you have emphasized the melding of the various shapes in the image. THere is a great flow within the image that is soothing. Color palette is great. no idea about TK linear profiles! Still a LR guy.

Thanks, @Ola_Jovall – I wish I could remember, but knowing me I’ve probably enhanced the truth. I think for the most truthful representation, the brightest yellows should actually be more like the duller color toward the top. I didn’t change the relationship of any colors but did essentially boost saturation or vibrance.

But if I set the current “process” (version 5) in LR, set the Adobe Landscape profile and Daylight WB (it was a clear day), and bring the Black and White sliders to give a good histogram, they are fairly close to this but the colors in mine are slightly more saturated. Of course, Adobe Landscape starts with some Saturation boost.

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Thanks, @Mario_Cornacchione! The Linear profiles are for raw conversion so definitely usable in LR, but they have been created for only a few cameras. Here’s the scoop:

I’m very excited about their ability to prevent highlight blowout. They exceed any of the Adobe profiles in that respect. I haven’t really tested the advantages for very dark tones but I suspect they work very well there, too.

Huge thanks to @Tony_Kuyper for this information!!!

Beautiful, Diane. I agree with @Ola_Jovall, it looks like a giant dinosaur foot! Thanks for sharing the TK link to linear profiles, great information.

This image has it all, great light, great colors, strong lines and interesting shapes, beautiful work Diane. I’ve never been to John Day so I don’t know if the colors are “accurate”, but that is essentially irrelevant because they are very pleasing aesthetically. The warm earth tone colors are gorgeous, and you have included just enough of a hint of blue in the shadows for some interesting color contrast. A minor nitpick on an otherwise excellent image, but I would burn down the highlights in the extreme LRC.

I used the Linear profiles on some tree silhouette images that I referenced in my dissussion on HDR and linear profiles, and I think they do a great job of making it easier to work the LR sliders on dark tones too. It’s not as much that shadows are protected, but I find it easier to recover shadow detail with the more predictable slider movements. Here is an example, to show the difficult dynamic range situation with shadows that I processed with HDR Merge and Linear profiles.

Thanks, @Ed_McGuirk! I need to go back to this image, which is just the HDR dng, and do some tweaking in PS. I agree about the highlights along the bottom edge.

Here’s a link to Ed’s article in case anyone missed it:

I am a big fan of Painted Hills, so it is nice to see this image, and to learn about techniques. What I enjoy most is the sense of depth you convey with the bright lower center and the shadowy middle left. Those colors are pretty accurate, but the density of color in the hills becomes deeper when they have moisture, and can get pretty flat in late summer.

Thanks, @Dick_Knudson! This was in early January and there had been quite a bit of snow the previous few days. The road up from Redmond had a lot of snow and ice on the higher elevations. It was much drier in the Painted Hills but there was some frost on the ground when I arrived early in the morning, so there was probably some moisture in the top levels.

Diane, I love this. The Painted Hills are one of my favorite places here in Oregon. FWIW, I’ve found the Painted Hills to be such a narrow dynamic range scene that I never thought to do an HDR version. Not sure you would really need it, but I love the processing you’ve done.

The yellow comes from the composition of the earth and not from sunlight. It’s mineral content. I, too, am a big fan of this place.

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Thanks for the information, @Igor_Doncov! @David_Bostock, I was surprised what a difference the HDR made, even with today’s sophisticated processing. The histograms of each of the 3 subs were all well within the dynamic range, but the resulting color sophistication and shadow detail was a big surprise. I no longer have the older HDR programs I had used so can’t compare.

This looks good. Would not have guessed it was an HDR image, but it turned out well. The shadows certainly have a lot of excellent detail, and that’s maybe a result of the HDR blend. My main though is ta a vignette might be useful here to focus attention on those cute “toes” in the bottom left of the image.