RAW Challenge! Steven Teitelbaum's Central Park New York M8 Pictures 2006

[Asher Kelman]

I am delighted to post for Steven Teitelbaum several pictures of his recent shoot in New York.

We start today with Central Park. This one one of New York's most romantic places to visit. In the fall, the tall New York Skyline is reflected between autumn leaves floating in the water. Paths are lined with yellows and gold.

I have selected a few that caught my eye and Steven kindly gave OPF limited use consent for you to process his RAW files to the best of your ability and post the results here. You can use any RAW processor. We hope to learn from you something of the reserve and robustness of these files.

These compressed JPG images shown here ARE NOT FOR DOWLOAD! The files are obtainable by sending me a PM with you name and your level of experience and RAW processor and I will send them to you. If this goes well, many more files will be made available.

You can optimize them any way you like in color or B&W. You can, if you wish add film grain, if that what you like to do. All images must be posted only here and should have © Steven Teitelbaum 2006 on one edge. Your Title and concepts should be succinctly given so we can correlate variants with intents!

Thank Steven for being so generous. We hope for some very interesting images as a result!

Have fun!

Asher

 

[Fabio Riccardi]

My Take with LightZone

Hello everybody,

I loved these images, autumn in NY has such gorgeous colors!

I wanted these colors to pop out, so I used an RGB ZoneMapper to boos the contrast in the foliage tonal range, which will also increase the color saturarion (reds and yellows!). This is the same trick photographers used to play with slide film: underexpose the shot increases saturation...

I also used the ToneMapper on the skyscrapers image, to have a more dramatic sky and open up the shadows.

But I wanted even more pop, so I used a trick that I recently learned from one of our own forums contributor and I adedd a Sharpen layer with large radius and with Soft Light blending mode, looks beautiful to me.

For the curious, LZN files are attached too.

Regards,

- Fabio

http://homepage.mac.com/fabio.riccardi/L1000174.lzn
http://homepage.mac.com/fabio.riccardi/L1000179.lzn
http://homepage.mac.com/fabio.riccardi/L1000193.lzn

 

[Asher Kelman]

Wonderful intepretation Fabio!

The colors, saturated as they are, add an extraordinary rich style and seem to me to provide a more personal encapsualting presence than the Adobe RAW "as is" images I posted. Mine by comparison look somewhat more open and a larger space!

The richness of colors is more better realized in your first image. The clouds have more 3 dimensionality from the way LightZone has handled the hues and tones in the clouds and brought out the subtle beauty.

I might have an issue perhaps with the skin tone of the people in the middle image, but it is likely that you din't deal with this separately.

Otherwise this is a new experience for me and I thank you!

Have you also considered a B&W, toned or untoned? That would be a special place where LZ should be king!

Kind wishes and appreciation,

Asher

BTW, you should provide titles, since htis is your intepretation! This way we might understand how the paths of related creativity works!

 

[Antonio Correia]

First of all I would like to ask if Steven Teitelbaum is the person refered in http://www.drteitelbaum.com/index.html ?

The images are easy to treat. (As if I was a great expert and master of the thing...
The images on the left are JPG from the original files un-treated. I use PSC, the RAW converter from PS CS2.
All I have done:
1. Change to LAB
2. Apply curves and make adjustments
3. Unsharp Mask in Lighness channel
4. Crop
5. Stroke
6. Canvas
7. Copyright
8. Save As JPG 12

On the 1.st photo I made 2 shots: one for the background and another for the reflection,
They were then melted after a mask.

On the 2.ed photo I corrected the yellow overcast.

On the 3.ed photo I cloned the bench

In all of them I have cropped with my own size 30*20
They are in my site here

 

[Antonio Correia]

First of all I would like to ask if Steven Teitelbaum is the person refered in http://www.drteitelbaum.com/index.html ?

The images are easy to treat. (As if I was a great expert and master of the thing...
The images on the left are JPG from the original files un-treated. I use PSC, the RAW converter from PS CS2.
All I have done:
1. Change to LAB
2. Apply curves and make adjustments
3. Unsharp Mask in Lighness channel
4. Crop
5. Stroke
6. Canvas
7. Copyright
8. Save As JPG 12

On the 1.st photo I made 2 shots: one for the background and another for the reflection,
They were then melted after a mask.

On the 2.ed photo I corrected the yellow overcast.

On the 3.ed photo I cloned the bench

In all of them I have cropped with my own size 30*20
They are in my site here

 

[John Kuo]

Here's my version, done in C1 Pro using Jamie Robert's M8 profile, WB as shot, convert to TIFF and then resize/sharpen in Photoshop CS2.

 

[Don Lashier]

Here's a couple "all in C1" versions. Taken into PS only to resize, add copyright and border. Composition was good so I didn't crop. These are fairly straightforward so I won't title. Skipped the third because it doesn't strike me. The first has a double-hump histo screaming for dual or even triples so I'll do that later. Had a hard time keeping the clouds while bringing out the foreground and sacrificed contrast on the buildings to do this. AWB seems to be weakness, cooled both images slightly. Tonality (DR) is great, lots to work with.

- DL

 

[James Roberts]

Hi Don--great to see you here!

Thanks for mentioning the tonality / DR of the M8 files. I've been "multiple exposing" files here till the cows come home, and it really is exceptionally good, even compared with my 1ds2 standard

You're right--that first shot screams for at least three C1 develops. I don't know if you've tried LightZone, but I like its ability to work independently with selections; I'm afraid my prowess with it though renders the results a little artificial looking still (not so good feathering the selections, and I usually want to avoid a lot of mid-tone colour shifts when compositing... and I don't know how to do that with LightZone yet).

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Straight C1 processing of just one shot

I cooled this to 5000 and the leaves came back to realistic. used "film extra shadow" and generic M8 profile (of 3.7.6) since the exposure looked good. Lowered exposure a bit, increased cc and cs (whatever they mean) by my usual amount, turned color noise reduction off (default is halfway across the slider!). That's all. It looks more real to me now.

scott

edit: the file may change to meet specifications (800 px high instead of wide, copyright overwritten), but not tonight. This will make several following comments a little obscure, but they remain useful.

 

[Don Lashier]

Hi Scott,

Nice version, but you forgot the copyright. Also, I don't know about others, but I find it a lot easier to compare if all are uniform size (ala original post, 800px max).

- DL

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Hi Scott,

Nice version, but you forgot the copyright. Also, I don't know about others, but I find it a lot easier to compare if all are uniform size (ala original post, 800px max).

- DL

I've never learned to do that. Does it require a trip to Photoshop? I just set C1's output specification to get 800 px width. Anyway, short description of copyright overlay would be appreciated and useful in the future. I can fix this one by replacing the file once it is labelled.

My version looked a little wetter and colder than the original, but that was probably what the day was like.

scott

 

[Don Lashier]

I've never learned to do that. Does it require a trip to Photoshop? I just set C1's output specification to get 800 px width. Anyway, short description of copyright overlay would be appreciated and useful in the future.

C1 only lets you control the width so in this case would need to be set to 537 or 538 (if uncropped) in order to give ~800 V.

Yes, superimposing copyright does require a trip to PS. Just select the type tool, type away and you get a new text layer. The easiest way to get the copyright symbol is to copy/paste. I usually just grab from the bottom of this web page, then edit text as desired.

Tips on the type tool. After entering your text, you typically may want to change the font, size, or color. If you first select a different tool (eg "move"), then reselect the type tool, then changes to the pulldowns or color will reflect on existing text. Otherwise you've got to select the text and the select inverse gums up what you see (there's a way to hide the select but I can never remember the trick). If you click on the font pulldown you can thumbwheel scroll thru the fonts, previewing, although for some reason this doesn't work on my office computer and I have to use the down/up arrows. Also, if you hold down CTRL while in the type tool you get the move tool. You also get it if you move the cursor away from the text.

- DL

 

[Luiz Vasconcellos]

When reading the mind fly...

I wanted some “depth”, punch colors and good skin, so I converted 3 TIFs with different
contrast(Silkypix contrast center) the picture is divided in 3 parts diagonal, the first girl(reading),
the second girl and the light post.
With Photshop CS2 I mixed the 3 parts with masks.
The first received the brightest and the last received the darkest.
The darkest also received more red.
The “depth” effect is clearly seen if you look at the sidewalk.

Lost fragments lies around...

I wanted to isolate this thing, so nothing special here just plain PhotoShop trick.

The time has come, but one last view before going back...

I wanted contrast punch colors and to equilibrate the sky with the ground, so I divided the
photo into 2 parts the sky and ground and converted 2 TIFs with different settings
and mixed them with PhotoShop using layer masks.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I've never learned to do that. Does it require a trip to Photoshop? I just set C1's output specification to get 800 px width. Anyway, short description of copyright overlay would be appreciated and useful in the future. I can fix this one by replacing the file once it is labelled.

My version looked a little wetter and colder than the original, but that was probably what the day was like.

scott

For anyone who needes to brush up on adding a © Jane Photographer Just open CS2 or any other version, click on the TEXT symbol in the tools and draw a text box you can write in. On the Mac as you know © is option G so that is easy. You then select that text and make it whatever type face size, style and color you think fits and put it at an edge. If you use the corner tool you can even rotate the text box and then you can put it on one side.

If you click on another layer the move tool will let you move it.

Save and then flatten a duplicate copy of the file by going as you know to Layers, drop down to flatten.

Please save these files as I may want to print them!

In the end, we'll resize them all and put them up in a matrix. I'll ask you for the smaller sizes later!

For now, I like the versioning. We should also have B&W since that's where the M8 must excel!


Asher

 

[Don Lashier]

Save and then flatten a duplicate copy of the file by going as you know to Layers, drop down to flatten.

I don't even bother flattening. "Save as" and selecting jpeg will save a flattened version and leave your original layers intact (which I have previously saved as psd). This lets you easily paste in a new conversion or move up to dual conversions without having to redo the text or borders you may have created. Of course if my psd is full size, then I dup image and resize (and perhaps final sharpen) before saving as jpeg.

- DL

 

[Fabio Riccardi]

Black and white with LightZone

Actually a split tone, brown in the shadows, yellow in the hilights, enjoy!

- Fabio

http://homepage.mac.com/fabio.riccardi/L1000193-BW.lzn

 

[Fabio Riccardi]

Skin tones and fall colors, alt take

Hi there,

some people remarked that skin tones in my images were not realistic, my first reaction was "so what, this is not a beauty cream ad". I like the orange cast and the dreamish atmosphere of the images, how many impressionistic paintings use real skin tones?

In any case, this is a challenge, so I tried and see if I could make an alt take to the image preserving the atmosphere and the skin tones at the same time. I just aded a Color Balance tool after the ZoneMapper and clicked on the side of the girl'd book for a neutral reference. I liked it.

- Fabio

http://homepage.mac.com/fabio.riccardi/L1000179-b.lzn

 

[Tim Gray]

Converted in Lightroom. WB taken from sliver of bldg on the right edge. Perspective adjusted. Slight increase in contrast in L, A and B channels. USM 20, 60, 0, moderate Shadow/Highlight adjustment.

 

[Don Lashier]

Ok, here's my triple conversion effort. Three conversions done in C1 - sky/buildings/everything-else. Separating the sky was easy but masking some of the trees was not, and I'm not sure worth the effort. If this were going to be printed any size, additional mask cleanup would need to be done.

- DL

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

C1 only lets you control the width so in this case would need to be set to 537 or 538 (if uncropped) in order to give ~800 V.

Replaced the picture with a smaller version. It seems to get a bit darker when produced smaller, although that may be the difference between working in a dark office at night and a daylit one in the morning. C1 Pro (which I got long ago with 5 upgrades) lets me select height in px, width in px or overall percentage on output, and allows making several sizes in the same run. I know LE does less, but don't know how much less.

BTW, I have a sandisk key for C1 LE which I am happy to give to anyone who sees this note and pm's me.

scott

 

[Don Lashier]

C1 Pro (which I got long ago with 5 upgrades) lets me select height in px, width in px or overall percentage on output, and allows making several sizes in the same run.

Duh, of course. It's the "constrain" function that only allows you to limit width, not height. This is useful when you have a batch of randomly cropped images that you want to process all to the same width. One item on my wishlist is that this be changed to a "max dimension limit" as when I process a batch for the web I have to do the horizontals and verticals in separate batches.

- DL

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

B/W using JFI red filter #4

I'm trying for a medium toned platinum-like effect. Red filter to help the IR from the foliage, decreased exposure to bring the sky back, levels, extra sharpening. Oops, forgot the copyright. will fix.

scott

 

[Fabio Riccardi]

HDR In LightZone

Hi Again,

yes, I'm being a pest but I couldn't resist... these images are very beautiful, here is an HDR rendering of the first image. Turns out that LZ is pretty good at opening up the shadows, in this case I identifyed the zone of the building on the right and I pulled it up, subsequently pulling a couple of lower segments down a bit to densen up the blacks.

- Fabio

http://homepage.mac.com/fabio.riccardi/L1000174-c.lzn

 

[Don Lashier]

PS Channel mixer version of my tri-conversion. For this shot I prefer color although Scott's medium tone works very nice - has a "vintage" look to it. Mine looks too contrasty in comparision - I should have gone back and undone the BP setting on the fg conversion - different tonal criteria for color and b/w.

- DL

 

[Asher Kelman]

I'm impressed how much creative room there is in these pictures after the shutter has opened and closed! This is fun!

Any more?

Asher

 

[Don Lashier]

What amazed me is the detail in the photo. Did you take a look at what's going on on the other side of the lake? Some sort of group, a guy meditating on the rock, and another photographer shooting back this way!

- DL

 

[scott kirkpatrick]

What amazed me is the detail in the photo. Did you take a look at what's going on on the other side of the lake? Some sort of group, a guy meditating on the rock, and another photographer shooting back this way!

- DL

Not bad for 1/90 of a second! I checked the building edges at 400% in the C1 preview, but I wasn't getting real sharpness. You must have spent some time looking at pictures for one of the intelligence agencies.

scott

 

[nicolas claris]

Hi Again,

yes, I'm being a pest but I couldn't resist...

Fabio, you're not really a pest, I CAN BE a better/worth provocative pest than you! :

Well a lots of efforts guys, it is amazing how to much workflow may disturb/break a picture when the orginal was well done (framed, colored, composed).
Despite all your efforts I still prefer the original, great picture!

I do like post prod, but only when needed, unless it is intentionaly done by the author and when the shot was done in order to be enhanced thru post prod with special effects in mind when shooting.
That is the beginning of the real "arc of intent".
Otherwise the risk is big that the pic will be destroyed by too much manipulation.

In the exercise above I'd love to see what Steven Teitelbaum would have done in post prod or read his comments...

 

[Luiz Vasconcellos]

Leica truly messed with that IR filter thing...

PhotoShop with some masked layers with different effects and
blend modes to blur or emphasize as desired.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Nicolas,

As you recognize we divert a little on whether or not it’s kosher to edit someone else's photographs. However, I should as one word: "unless". Unless?

Unless there's a good enjoyable reason!

1. Steve wants to see how much possibilities there are digitally with his files. He's a long time Leica film shooter, new to digital just 5 weeks or so!

2. We all want to see how robust the files are to creative work.

3. We can get an idea of the quality of the lens-sensor combo to see how it affects resolution, contrast dynamic range and more.

4. It gives an opportunity for folks considering an M8 to look at files without personal cost.

5. It helps me understand more about siblings variants possible from the original artists vision.

As you know, I postulate there's an arc of intent in Art. Art is a form made to put one's vision in something that someone else can experience and reinvoke that vision, emotions, ideas, and significance.

There's an arc of intent: Vision, work then experiencing the art by the artist or someone else.

So the new photographer is both experiencing the joy of Steve's work and the fun of making one's own vision as if one was there, (but shooting say from a hotel window where one cannot move around).

So that is why we do this!

This is consensual sex!

Asher