First time in RAW

Yes I've been brave

I left this in auto white balance - but I really need to lighten the snow . I've had a quick go in Aperture - but I'm not happy with the result - could I have some ideas as to how I whiten the snow please ?

[IMG]http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/Anhelyna/IMGP1789.jpg[/IMG]

I like the way I got the sun on the next-door-but-one house , I could possibly do with bringing up the colours slightly to give them a bit more 'punch ' but its the snow that's getting to me

won't work as it's in shadow and if you sort the WB for the sun, you'll get blue snow; if you sort for shadow, you'll get orange(?) sun.

sorry, no can do. Increase the saturation maybe a tad (1.1-1.2) and maybe adjust WB by hand, but keep an eye on the house.

Bret

The sky is blue, so the white snow is reflecting blue. This happens with water as well.

If you have a version of Photoshop with "Photo Filter" as an option, use the 81 filter to "correct" the image, adjusting its strength to suit.

Alternatively, reset the white point in Levels. Click on the right hand eye-dropper symbol and then click in the image what you want to be white - perhaps the window frame. The rest of the image will reset to reflect the change. This option can be too strong, but it's worth a try.

Hi Techno, John's correct: an overall white point reset would be too strong and you'd lose your cloud detail. I had a go by selecting just the snow using the magic wand tool then, as John suggested, reset the white point in the middle of the "lawn" as I wanted to retain some shadow tones. What do you think?
[IMG]http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/ad116/ADC3440/Untitled-1-2.jpg[/IMG]

I did in P/S dont know how to put it on here ??

I has a quick play with this, if you don't mind, TT, and got a half-decent result using layers. link

Just make a duplicate layer of your photo and alter the WB of the duplicate to the temperature that works best (in this case, I just used the "cloudy" preset). Make a layer mask of the duplicate and paint black over everything you want to "show through" from the original photo -- in this case, everythng except the foreground snow. I lightened the snow a tad with levels, but you can continue fiddling to your heart's content.

I use Serif PhotoPlus, but the same technique can be applied in -- what do you call that other software? It's made by Abode or Adobe or summat.

Apologies for never mastering the image embedding intricacies of the forum.

Edit: Looking at my effort agin, it should be a tad lighter and a tad "whiter". Easily done, though.

Al

When taking pictures with snow and sun, it's best to use a strong UV filter. It saves a lot of work in post processing.

Thanks guys

Some ideas there -

Yves

Now I should have thought of that - me bad and I have a UV filter for all my lenses I didn't think it was that strong at 8.15 am - but obviously was. The Master of that version is quite dark .

Even my glasses are photochromatic - so would have been pitch black while I was out - hmm if they are black I'll have to remember to put the UV Filter on

John

Reflection should have struck me - but it hasn't .

Hmm would a CPL deal with that or is Yves' suggestion of UV filter better ?

Andrew

you've just given me an idea - now I'm trying to dredge up something from my memory - I'll have another play over the next few days [ depending on the amount of snow shovelling I have to do



I'm am Machead - not using PSE etc - I've been using Aperture for about the last 3 weeks - slowly getting the idea of how to do things .

Watch this space

The UV filter would work with film better than digital. In any event, modern lenses filter out UV very effectively anyway. Certainly AWB would not be a good idea as it will try to "correct" any shift in colour. I would use daylight setting.

A CPL will rarkem the blue sky potentially but not sure about the snow. It depends on the degree of polarisation of the light.

Shooting RAW it is possible to change the white balance in the RAW converter, so it doesn't really matter what it is set to surely?
Have you tried increasing the exposure on it slightly in the RAW converter too?
Maybe getting an exposure reading off the snow if that is what is important in your photo, rather than allowing the camera to decide the exposure would help somewhat too?

I dunno the answers TT - just putting forward some thoughts. I hate photographing snow as much as I hate having to cope with it just to get around .

Gwyn - I tried changing WB in Aperture - but didn't get anywhere very fast

IF I get a chance with more of the white solid precipitate I'll change the WB, before I start, to daylight .

I'll try and do several shots changing things in the camera first, but doing only 1 change each time .

One thing which actually did surprise me was that to get the aperture to f4 I had to up the ISO to 400 . I wanted to get it as far open as I could - maybe that was a mistake - but then I'm still learning .

I obviously chose the wrong thing for my first serious attempt - but these things happen .

OK - got more shots today and I changed my settings in the K-x first [ WB ] and then ISO - and learnt from this that a higher ISO helps

OH and I woke up to 6ins of the white stuff

Today's efforts

[IMG]http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/Anhelyna/IMGP1792.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/Anhelyna/IMGP1802.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a41/Anhelyna/IMGP1800.jpg[/IMG]

I feel these are better but are they ?

Did you shoot RAW? Did you attempt to edit the shots in your RAW converter? The second new shot is underexposed and yellowish to my eyes. And we all know that yellow snow = not good

You could have a play with the WB settings in your RAW converter and 'save' the shot - this is a good reason to use RAW: white balance can be changed after the shot.

There is plenty of scope to improve exposure and contrast in your RAW converter too.

The first from today is better. I suspect the key difference between it and the shot you took yesterday is that the foreground is not in shadow, so you haven't got that large area of snow reflecting the blue sky.

The second one was difficult to get - it's very much in the shadow and light was going at that point [ Actually it was the last in the series ]

Yes they are all in RAW and are dropped straight into Aperture.

The first one was taken after about an hour's work clearing some snow and then I got some sun !! After that we reverted to grey sky - oh and snow flurries