Mini Workflow Spot Color

The original image of a couple kids being photographed by their mother.

All colors except for blue are desaturated using the saturation curve of the HSV tool.

Fine tune in CIECAM using the JS Lightness and Saturation algorithm.

That's it folks.

But, of course, with RT editing nothing is ever finished. So here is the new stuff you can create when you switch to the all algorithm and start draggin' them sliders around.  The hidden artist titles this 'Cindy's Nightmare - Do you have to tell wicked step moma you caught me sneaking out to the Prince's Rave?'

Main points
The hue slider gives a full range of of colors
When  ISO6400 noise is all the same color it becomes artistic texture. Fine tune that with the Noise Reduction Chromatic sliders
The other CIECAM sliders work pretty much as expected but with different intensities. For example the Q brightness slider is stronger than the L lightness slider and at 100% washes everything except the colors to white

Happy exploring your own Hidden Artist

Processed with RawTherapee 4.0.12.165  which can be found at http://rawtherapee.com/downloads

A Study in White and Blue

On a bright and warm May day earlier this week-today is grey and chilly- I went to the Olbrich Gardens to field test new optics. Last Saturday I had bought an oldish Nikkor 50mm f1.8 lens that uses my D7000's internal motor to focus along with a set of extension tubes with all the electrical and mechanical connections needed  to completely control the lens. The hidden artist do-something-different challenge I took on was to leave my zoom lenses in the camera bag and shoot with only the 50 mm lens.

The magnolia trees were in bloom and the sky was blue with wispy clouds. My original shot with RT's neutral profile. Obviously it could use a dose of RT magic.

After a white balance on the magnolia leaves and a default profile.  This version is better but the hidden artist within wanted a bit more ump

The HSV Equalizer tool has been updated  and is now less finicky to use. Dragging its blue bar up or down to change the value or lightness of the blue in the sky seemed appropriate. Here is up. It didn't make a massive amount of difference since the sky's value was already high.

 And here is down which did. Notice how the  blue channel has shifted to the left in the histogram

With the value curve reset I played with the blue saturation curve. Here is up.

And here is down. 

With this image it may not be immediately obvious but a judicious use of both the value and saturation curves is a great way to improve skies without going over the top like I'm doing now. The Hue curve rotates the color wheel to create totally aliens skies. This green version is one of many.

After settling on a moderate increase in the sky's value I went on to the CIECAM02 tool. A large contrast boost of 80 made both the sky and the tree far more dramatic.

And to lighten the clouds  I upped the brightness to 25.

To bring down the blues I played around with the Colorfullness curve.

And as a final comparison here is where I stated once again.

RT's color correction tools are the best around, period. So load up an image the could use a little sky magic and start dragging curves and sliders. I predict you will like what you discover.

A Golden Sky

Last Thursday in the ongoing pursuit of bargains, I took a break from more serious errands after I spotted a garage sale sign. A good number of blocks later without passing a garage sale I was about to turn around.  Then I spotted a second sign. Since it was mid afternoon of a blustery rainy day the sign was half blown over and not immediately readable from the car.  But since its road only went one way I turned and headed down the side street.

This time I drove several winding looping blocks without a hint of a garage sale.  Then I came on an entrance to one of the city's many neighborhood parks. For the moment it wasn't raining and my D7000 kit was on the back seat so I stopped to explore any photo opportunities. And found this addition to the photographic genre, atmospheric skies.

Yes, for the zillionth time I forgot to switch the white balance to auto after I finished shooting indoors under compact fluorescent lighting.

But that is what the white balance dropper is for. I clicked in the circled area.

And ended up with this image

Sort of what I was after--an essentially monochrome RGB image. But it lacked that extra punch.  I decided to experiment and see how well RT could tone this image.

The HSV flat field editor in the color tab had worked well on other more colorful images.  A disappointment here. With so little color to work on, I saw only a slight shift towand red.

I went back to my tried and true toning procedure-LAB mode in the exposure tab. As I've blogged about earlier the b color channel controls the ratio of the two complimentary colors, blue and yellow. Took only two simple drags to adjust their ratio and few more slider adjustments to fine tune the image.

A couple builds back I would have stopped here  but there was one more routine to try, the channel mixer.

Because of bugs it hadn't worked as expected the last time I tried it on some infrared images. But according to the RT forum, all those bugs had been swatted in time for the latest 4.0.3.4 build.

Nobody fibbed.  I moved the slider around without any particular plan or science until I found a richer color than I had using the LAB mode.

The  final image.

So download RT and try it on your images. You won't be disappointed.

PS. On my way back, I passed the garage sale a couple blocks farther down from where I made the wrong turn. Bought a neat junk/ treasure that will be used-a heated coffee carafe complete with a thermostatic control that varies the temperature from just lukewarm to burn you tongue.

Now, while I drive on a photo day trip, my coffee fiend of a wife can sip her favorite brew as she scans to countryside for more photo opportunities.

Serendipity,  wouldn't you say.