Quote:
Originally Posted by Stecyk
Hi RFS,
Thank you for your excellent detailed reply. I was hoping you would see my post and respond.
As I worked through your directions, I found in both cases I was moving to the right.
Exposure: Hit Alt, black screen, move to the right, until something lights up.
Shadows: Hit Alt, screen nearly all white, move to the right until black items in the shot show up as being black.
I understand your comments about brightness and contrast affecting the midtones.
Another follow-up question for you: When you are using the Photovision target, do you use the color samplers on the white and black strips? And if so, what values do you strive for?
On my example--
White: R:247, G:247, B:248 (seems good)
Black: R:65, G:63, B:63 (perhaps a bit bright?)
The black seems a bit bright. But if I increase the shadows, then I clip some of the darker areas, such as the perimeter of the target which is a deeper black.
I greatly appreciate your response. 
Best regards,
Kevin |
First, keep in mind in regard the Shadow slider that anything that shows up while you are holding the Alt key will be completely black in the photo if you use that shadow. So you are often deciding what you want to be completely black in the photo and you slide until that item just shows up. Now anything that is darker than that item will be totally black also. Take particular care when dealing with eyes. If you see part of the eye show up (other that the pupil), then back off to the left because usually you don't won't any part of the eye other than the pupil to be totally black.
When using the target in post processing, there are two approaches. If in RAW, then you can click on the gray stripe to set the color balance. I then usually slide a little right at that point to get extra warmth. But I usually try to get the WB right in the camera, so I don't usually have to do much in the RAW converter.
If using the target in Photoshop, then you will use it in Curves to set the color balance. You do this by clicking first on the black stripe with the black eye dropper, then the white stripe with the white eyedropper and finally the gray stripe with the gray eyedropper. This usually gets you very close. But before you do this, you need to set the defaults for eyedropper use in the Curves palette. I use about 20,20,20 for black and 240,240,240 for white. and I set gray to 128,128,128 (18% gray).
Cheers,
rfs