Filters

Why not just do grads in software? You can place them much more accurately, add multiple grads at different angles and intensity. Ans you're not just restricted to diminishing exposure.... you can brighten, change contrast, shadow and highlights, noise reduction, change temperature, tint, saturation and so on.

You can still do all that of course, and I do. But a starting point of a more balanced exposure gives greater flexibility to do all those things much better. The low iso performance of the K5 isn't anywhere near good enough yet imo to dispense with real grads. Please don't show me your squidthing.

I think trying to achieve the the best quality image with the camera is more satisfying and skillful than modifying the image on a computer, let's face it anyone that is good on a computer can make a poor image look good.

Hi all, I wouldn't know where to start on how to apply a hard grad ND to a sky in software. Does it take the same length of time and can some one share the how pleaae?

the biggest pain is the colour cast, magenta on Cokin, bluish on Hitec, if you double or triple them. the hitec 10 stop has a strong colour cast that has to be got rid of. you do not have that problem in software. as for water it is surprising how fast a shutter speed you can use and still blur a waterfall or river, clouds are another matter but again you can pp motion into those i imagine.
nd in software,i would think nik colour efex is the easiest, it has a preset nd selection just click the mouse and then adjust to suit

There are lots of ways to do this in photoshop, using a gradient fill layer or just a new layer and the gradient tool - you can find loads on the internet and I'm sure others will detail the way they find most effective.

Have a play with this simple method as an alternative:

1) Click on the select tool. Change "feather" to 100 or 150 px. You can vary this depending on how hard you want the transition to be.

2) Make a selection of the sky, with the bottom edge finishing on the land you want unaffected. Use CTRL-J to create a new layer using just the selection.

3) Make sure the new layer is active - and use any way you like (e.g. levels) to adjust the sky brightness.

I (sometimes) use a variant on this in PSE8, 'coz you cannot create a new 16 bit layer using CTRL-J (though you can in 8-bit). Instead, in PSE, click on the MOVE tool. Hold down ALT and use the mouse to drag the 16-bit image in any direction, just a little. After doing that, move the image back again and let go of the mouse button. Magically a new layer appears. Check whether it is in the correct place by changing the blend mode temporarily to "Difference" - the screen should go black if OK. Change the blend mode back to normal. You can then make the sky selection, invert the selection and hit the delete key. You are then in the same place you would be after Step 2 had you been using Photshop.

Have fun
Andrew

It's a personal preference..on the lines of the other thread last week, many (me included)get much more satisfaction from capturing the scene in front of them as accurately as possible and minimising time spent on a PC...I don't see the point of messing around in software when a well placed filter or two produces excellent results

Each to their own

Simon

It is really a breeze to remove the colour casts in post processing, even with something like the Hitec 10 stopper. With the ND grads, I use Hitec and have not had any colour cast worth noting.

As Dr. Orloff mentioned, it is much better to get a balanced exposure in the camera than to have to manipulate it in PP to gain the right balance. Images can tend to have a 'forced' look if processed to heavily, especially when trying to recover detail in shadows. The K-5 is excellent in this regard, but still does not compensate adequately and results are much better with the balance of the exposure correct in the camera.

Regards
David

I prefer physical filters to software versions but the beauty is the choice available to us allowing so many options

I have no problem with colour casts with my nd grads - my blue grad does have a colour cast - is this cheating

So making a poor scene look good by putting a ND grad filter on the front of a lens is more skilful than putting a ND grad filter on the captured image of that poor scene in software?

I really haven't a problem with personal preferences of doing something "in camera" or "in post processing" ( software or darkroom). After all, each to their own

However to claim one is more skilful than the other is something I would take issue with.





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To grad a sky in Lightroom....

1] Select Grad Tool

2] click and drag from top of sky to bottom of sky.

3] dial in preferred negative exposure value

Job done

p.s you can adjust the angle, width and intensity of the grad filter at anytime by clicking and dragging on the pivot point and guidlines