# making colors "pop"- GIMP



## jowensphoto

Pop as in vibrancy and hue, not selective color 

Can any one recommend tips or tutorials? I was looking at some sunset photos earlier and the colors were just soooooo vibrant and bright, but obviously not SOOC. I'm pretty good with GIMP, but have struggled with this one thing for awhile. Looked up on google, couldn't find anything worth trying.

Thanks in advance


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## KmH

GIMP tutorials - Google Search

Pop is usually more about the lighting than the color. 'Pop' is also known as separation. A basic tenent of the visual arts is "light advances, dark receeds". In other words having the background somewhat darker than the primary image subject makes the primary subject 'pop' from the background.


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## unpopular

I gtg drop the kids off at the pool (literally, lol) but I will research a few things. I think I have a some good tips and idea for you.


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## unpopular

Given how you posed your question, you may already be aware that the visual appearance of saturation is not always tied to a color's mathematical description of it's saturation. You can have a very saturated color, but it may appear mute if it has high luminance. Thus, vibrancy, or how saturated a color appears, is tied to it's brightness.

The most basic way of increasing vibrancy is to increase contrast in RGB mode. Because saturation is directly coupled with and influenced by the brightness of the RGB composite channels, adjusting contrast will cause less vibrant colors to become more washed out, while making more vibrant colors even more bold - incidentally while adjusting tonal contrast, you are also adjusting saturation contrast.

Adjusting saturation contrast makes an image appear more vibrant because the eye is drawn to more saturated colors over less saturated colors. By making areas of high vibrancy more accessible to the eye, we interpret the adjustment as an increase to vibrancy. 

Having clean, desaturated hilights is probably the biggest thing that will help the appearance of vibrancy. We expect brighter regions to be desaturated, and having a color cast in the hilights permits them to compete for our attention with what the eye expects to be more vibrant.

Very few tools allow you to adjust saturation directly, without adjusting hue and luminance as well. One way to do this is to place a curves adjustment on saturation layer mode in an RGB color space, though this method is a bit kludgy and doesn't really work linearly.

Some tools do permit you to adjust saturation directly. Photoline32 does, and I believe that this is planned for GIMP in the future. Experimental techniques I've employed using Blender have also been very powerful. If you're interested in this approach, feel free to PM me for details.

What GIMP does permit is HSL decomposition, which splits the layers into HSL components, with the S component representing saturation. You can then apply a curve to this directly and compose the HSV image back into an composite color image. With practice, you could probably be able to predict how the results will turn out.

I can think up at least one other way, but it's weird and too complicated to describe here. Let me know if you're interested.

The other way to control vibrancy is through simultaneous contrast, which is how the eye perceives color when placed next other colors. For example, if you have a red object next to a blue object, adjusting the blue object to be even slightly more cyan/green will cause the red object to appear more vibrant.

I have also tried some approaches in HSL Hue Curves, by making warmer colors warmer and cooler colors cooler in increase vibrancy. This technique is subtle, but can work provided you don't get too carried away, it may also be carried out in Hue/Sat.

Simultaneous contrast is kind of a tricky subject, for which I don't have as much experience with. Every color has simultaneous contrasting pairs, so the technique can be applied in any situation. The issue is how it should be carried out and controlled. It's theory is pioneered by Josef Albers and is covered in his book, The Interaction of Color. For a very broad, technical understanding of this subject, I would recommend this book - not though, this is not a book on photography, digital or otherwise, but rather strictly about color theory.


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## unpopular

take a look at this. I can't use it on my Mac, and I am having a hard time interpreting what exactly some of those "Saturation Curves" are doing. But there might be something to it:

Lab curves for GIMP - mm-log


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## unpopular

Side note:

Photivo - photivo wiki

weird.


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## unpopular

^^ While there is no "magic button", there are general principles in color theory that can be applied to any image. OP is a very intelligent person, so I really don't doubt that she is unable to grasp these concepts.


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## 480sparky

The problem with GIMP is it's 8-bit, so it can't handle raw images.  And raw is what you may need to really get the results you want.

I doubt many images you see that have what you're looking for are PP'd in 8-bit.


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## Ysarex

I'd have to say it's cloning out the fire hydrant.

Joe


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## unpopular

As a matter of fact, I can.

There are a lot of factors here. The most obvious is the red fire hydrant being removed which makes the man's face the warmest element in the image. The background is actually quite desaturated by comparison, while the face is also brighter.

The background also has been muted by removing variation in tones, further allowing the subject uncompetitive access to how we read the image.

Because our eye is drawn to warm colors as well as lighter colors, the man's face becomes the dominant feature. Furthermore, warm colors appear to our mind as in the foreground, while cooler colors appear in the background, so there is a simultaneous contrast element as well.


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## Ysarex

How about a real example using GIMP:

Here's a photo under classic full sunlight of a scene with a full contrast range. I took the camera JPEG, white balanced it and used Levels to normalize the tone response and I got the top photo -- very close to the camera JPEG as cameras do pretty well under classic conditions. "Pop" is not a photographic term but I think I know what Jess is after -- the bottom photo.




In GIMP starting with the top photo: From the Windows menu select Dockable Dialogs/Layers. In the Layers palette right click on the background layer and from the pop up menu select Duplicate. Do it again so there are two dupes of the original.

What we're going to do is going to raise contrast and the shadows are already dark enough. So click on the top dupe layer and from the Colors menu select Threshold. Pull the slider to the left until the value is 60 -- that's the shadows now showing black. Click OK. Now from the Select menu get By Color and click anywhere that's white. Back in the Layers palette right click on the Threshold layer and delete it.

Now select the top of the two remaining layers and right click on it. From the menu select Add Layer Mask. In the Layer Mask dialog click the radio button next to Selection and click OK. That mask will protect the shadows from the coming effect. NOTE: This could be done reversed to protect the highlights.

In the Layers dialog at the top where it says Mode change it from Normal to Soft Light. That's too much so reduce the opacity an appropriate amount.

One last step. Click directly on the mask on the top layer and then from the Filters menu select Blur/Gaussian Blur and the value will depend on the resolution of the image -- for this image I used 8. Blur the mask.

Form the Image menu select Flatten Image. Contrast and Saturation have been increased. The supreme advantage of the Soft Light Blend is that it typically does not blow out the highlights in the process.

NOTE: Jess used the term vibrancy as well as Pop. Maybe I'm just and old curmudgeon but these non-photographic terms disturb me because they are undefined, sic. see above discussion. Photographers have a vocabulary that has been refined for over a century and it helps us identify what we're seeing. I think that's a good idea. Pop is an eastern slang term for a sugary carbonated beverage or a sudden loud noise.

Here's a link to the full-res original if you'd like to try it: http://photojoes.org/paper_mill_01.jpg

Joe


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## unpopular

Simply desaturating the image does not explain the whole situation, while tonal contrast is the most significant factor here, I maintain that saturation is still playing a significant role in the image. I would even go as far to say that the comparison between a black and white and color version is like apples to oranges since color relies on and is affected by luminance. Furthermore the hydrant is not muted relative to the rest of the image. 

If you measure saturation between the man's face and the hydrant, both are around 40-70%, while in the edit the background is pretty much uniformly around 40%.

If this were not the case, then the hydrant would not have been so substantially distracting.

---

In the case of the wheat field the eye is drawn to the exception, like sorting out a predator or food source amongst green leaves. Just as we would notice a white square over a normally dominant black field, we notice a blue tractor over a normally dominant yellow background.


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## unpopular

Just for the sake of example, here is another edit where warmer colors were made warmer, cooler colors were made cooler, saturated colors more saturated and less saturated colors made less saturated. Notice that overall luminance remains constant, without risk to the bright steam, but the appearance of contrast is increased:


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## Ysarex

Peano said:


> snip...I don't use Gimp, so I can't describe the changes in terms  of Gimp tools...



OK, the OP does use GIMP; that was actually in the post title.

So just for comparison -- that's great:



Why the big change in white balance? Are unrealistic colors part of how you define "pop?" I see the gradient you placed in the sky but the color is now a hue value that does not occur in the sky on planet earth -- I'm not gettin' that. And as a result you've really desaturated the warm colors in the mill. I thought "pop" typically meant an increase in saturation -- Jess did use the term vibrancy; not that I'm endorsing that term but it has recently come to mean an increase in saturation. You've in fact decreased saturation in everything except the sky. You mention opening shadow details, but in fact you did the opposite, your shadows are darker than mine...hmm?

Joe


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## unpopular

Peano's image I think does represent vibrancy, and actually the desaturated warm colors do help achieve this. If all the colors were equally saturated, you don't get that vibrant "pop" because more color elements must compete for our attention. By having a light, lower saturated subject against a dark, higher saturated background, you will achieve some sense of vibrancy. Vibrancy is not merely a global increase of saturation, it's an increase in saturation relative to some other element.

As for the colors being inaccurate, I don't really mind that. Because we're dealing with "vibrancy" and not absolute saturation, there is some interpretive representation. In this case, the sky is represented as "bluer than blue", even if it's not objectively accurate.


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## jowensphoto

Thank you every one for such great advice!!!

Unpopular -- thank you for such detailed explanations. The tips combined with the how and why are awesome! I posed what I thought was a simple question, but thanks to you, I have a much better understanding of color. Probably what my art teachers have been trying to explain all along, it just never clicked!

Sparky -- yes, unfortunately I realize all of that. I do use a RAW converter plug-in, so that helps a bit... but still doesn't change the fact that it's 8-bit. Has anyone heard anything about when that could change? I really don't understand HOW it hasn't, given that GIMP is FOSS. If I had that level of programming expertise, I'd take on the challenge 

Joe -- you remembered my name! LOL Thank you for posting the example. I couldn't think of the correct word(s) for pop, and it was a long day. I'm glad you were able to decipher!

Peano -- a fellow DMV'er! Thank you for your advice and examples.

I'll take everyone's thoughts and suggestions into consideration. You all have given me so many ideas to work with; I'm starting to feel a bit inspired again.


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## jowensphoto

OK, so I am working on HSL decomp. It's not going so well lol

Original (long night exposure, aroung 10PM)


On this edit, I decomposed to HSL. Selected curves tool and used "value" and recomposed to RGB. Should I be doing each RGB curve separately?


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## Ysarex

GIMP decomp to various color models can be a tricky business. If you want to play with what Unpopular was suggesting take your photo and from the Colors menu select Components/Decompose then in the dialog that opens decompose to HSL.

GIMP will show you a strange B&W version of the photo and will default to the L channel as selected. You don't want to alter the L channel. Go to the Windows menu of your HSL image and select Dockable Dialogs/Layers. The middle channel is the S channel -- click on that one. Then you can access Curves and alter the S channel. The problem is you won't be able to see what you're doing. So you want to make a change and then write down what you did.

You have two options now to put it back. From the Colors menu select Components and if you select recompose GIMP will apply the change you made back to the original that you should still have open. If you select Compose then you don't want to change the color model to RGB. If you select Compose leave the Color Model HSL and you'll get a new image with the change applied.

Joe


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## jowensphoto

Ysarex said:


> If you select Compose then you don't want to change the color model to RGB. If you select Compose leave the Color Model HSL and you'll get a new image with the change applied.
> 
> Joe



That's where I went wrong. I composed to RGB, will try again with composing to HSL.


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## Ysarex

unpopular said:


> Peano's image I think does represent vibrancy, and actually the desaturated warm colors do help achieve this. If all the colors were equally saturated, you don't get that vibrant "pop" because more color elements must compete for our attention. By having a light, lower saturated subject against a dark, higher saturated background, you will achieve some sense of vibrancy. Vibrancy is not merely a global increase of saturation, it's an increase in saturation relative to some other element.
> 
> As for the colors being inaccurate, I don't really mind that. Because we're dealing with "vibrancy" and not absolute saturation, there is some interpretive representation. In this case, the sky is represented as "bluer than blue", even if it's not objectively accurate.



I was referring to the fact that the color of the sky was shifted red which is certainly not a case of "bluer than blue" and I'm not aware of any definition of vibrant that involves altering the Hue of a color. I have also never before encountered this definition of vibrancy: "Vibrancy...., it's an increase in saturation relative to some other element." I believe that's uniquely your own.

Joe


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## unpopular

Perhaps it is uniquely my own, in college I thought a lot about the issue of "vibrancy" and may have confused my own theory on the topic with established ones. I'm also pretty enthusiastic and opinionated - a dangerous combination, I know.

But we do perceive vibrancy, and often it's something other than simply increased saturation. What makes something "vibrant" is very complex, and I believe can include hue. In this example, there is the same green relative to two equally saturated, equally bright hues. However, one green patch appears more "vibrant" than the other:



(it may help to cover one or the other with your hand so that they do not influence one another)

So really my definition of vibrancy being strictly relative saturation is incomplete. However, vibrancy relies on the _appearance_ of saturation _relative _to other elements within a composition.

---

I took a look Peano's example, which you said was shifted redder. This didn't make sense to me, because if it were redder. Actually, Peano's example has an almost identical hue. Actually, according to my measurements, your version is about 9.4° "Redder". The two are also similarly saturated. This leaves only Value, Peano's edit is significantly *darker*.

This is a good illustration of how changing luminance affects the perception of color. Peano's edit makes the sky look more saturated and significantly more violet (which I perceive as "deeper" and "bluer than blue"). When in fact, technically your version is slightly more violet and nearly identically saturated.

---

On a similar, and humorous note - as I was typing this up, my wife smelled french toast cooking, and assumed it was the upstairs tenants. I only smelled a wild fire. When I went to change the my son's diaper, all she detected was the wild fire.


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## unpopular

Here is another example of how saturation affects vibrancy. When considering this example, the point isn't that "pair A is more vibrant than pair B", but rather pay attention only to the orange swatch relative to the yellow swatch. In the examples at left, regardless of saturation, the orange swatch is nearly equally as vibrant as the yellow swatch. Our eyes are slightly more attracted to yellow, but for the most part each are equally dominant. However, the example on the right the orange is more dominant due to it being relatively more saturated than the yellow:



Another interesting thing I am noticing is that my eye perceives the desaturated orange, and particularly yellow as almost greener, thus cooler.


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## unpopular

Here, relative saturation:



Note that only saturation is changed, despite that brightness appears to have been modified, giving the impression of tonal contrast. This can help preserve detail while increasing the perception of contrast.


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## jowensphoto

Peano- that is exactly what I'm looking for; realism isn't what I'm trying to achieve, but an exaggeration of reality.

http://hd-desktop-wallpapers.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-york-city-skyline-sunset-wallpaper.html
That's a perfect example of my goal.


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## Ysarex

unpopular said:


> Perhaps it is uniquely my own, in college I thought a lot about the issue of "vibrancy" and may have confused my own theory on the topic with established ones. I'm also pretty enthusiastic and opinionated - a dangerous combination, I know.
> 
> But we do perceive vibrancy, and often it's something other than simply increased saturation. What makes something "vibrant" is very complex, and I believe can include hue. In this example, there is the same green relative to two equally saturated, equally bright hues. However, one green patch appears more "vibrant" than the other:
> 
> View attachment 12477
> 
> (it may help to cover one or the other with your hand so that they do not influence one another)
> 
> So really my definition of vibrancy being strictly relative saturation is incomplete. However, vibrancy relies on the _appearance_ of saturation _relative _to other elements within a composition.
> 
> ---
> 
> I took a look Peano's example, which you said was shifted redder. This didn't make sense to me, because if it were redder. Actually, Peano's example has an almost identical hue. Actually, according to my measurements, your version is about 9.4° "Redder". The two are also similarly saturated. This leaves only Value, Peano's edit is significantly *darker*.
> 
> This is a good illustration of how changing luminance affects the perception of color. Peano's edit makes the sky look more saturated and significantly more violet (which I perceive as "deeper" and "bluer than blue"). When in fact, technically your version is slightly more violet and nearly identically saturated.
> 
> ---
> 
> On a similar, and humorous note - as I was typing this up, my wife smelled french toast cooking, and assumed it was the upstairs tenants. I only smelled a wild fire. When I went to change the my son's diaper, all she detected was the wild fire.



I am familiar with the concepts of simultaneous and success contrast -- I teach color theory to college Art students. It is common when painters use sloppy language to slip the term vibrant in there to describe the perceived alteration in chroma that these effects produce. Technically and correctly artists use the term vibrant in reference to a color to indicate a high chroma value. The term vibrant is frankly questionably used by artists and painters -- it's a sloppy term with weak meaning that often produces just this kind of confusion -- for example it encourages people to invent definitions.

More practically we're dealing with a question related to photography where vibrant and vibrancy are recently and fadishly used and with even more confusion as to meaning. It's not a photographic term and shouldn't become one, but that's water under the bridge. A curse upon Adobe for the introduction of the Vibrance control in LR/ACR and CS4. It belongs in the Filter section. For what it's worth since Adobe has committed this transgression we can look to that adjustment for a contemporary definition. What that control does is selectively raise saturation of lesser saturated colors. To that extent vibrancy as practiced by Adobe means leaving highly saturated colors highly saturated and raising the saturation of the less saturated colors.

As for sky color above -- this is what I meant:



The point isn't the direction or shift of the hue value, and I grant you it isn't major, but there's no justification for it relative to any accepted definition of vibrant. Chroma and value are linked but hue is independent of chroma. The white balance of the photo was altered unrelated to "vibrancy."

Even in the world of paint and pigments where we have the precise control to chose specific colors and their placement, simultaneous/successive contrast are esoteric topics at best and most commonly trotted out as a parlor trick. NONE OF THIS HELPS JESS who had a question about how to get results using GIMP. I seriously doubt that Jess started this post to discover how to add a simultaneous contrast effect into a photograph. If this thread is going to continue let's help Jess get results.

Joe

P.S. Stare at the center of the square:


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## unpopular

Well. Those are HDR.


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## unpopular

Joe - you are right, I read it backwards. GTG for now.


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## jowensphoto

I appreciate everyone's help! I've learned more than what I asked about originally, but hey, that's not a bad thing


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## jowensphoto

unpopular said:


> Well. Those are HDR.



That's what I thought  No HDR in GIMP.


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## Ysarex

Peano said:


> Ysarex said:
> 
> 
> 
> NOTE: Jess used the term vibrancy as well as Pop. Maybe I'm just and old curmudgeon but these non-photographic terms disturb me because they are undefined, sic. see above discussion. Photographers have a vocabulary that has been refined for over a century and it helps us identify what we're seeing.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> New knowledge and new techniques expand vocabulary. "Vibrance" has been
> in the Photoshop vocabulary for years, both in Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw.
Click to expand...



I'm very aware of that. I remember when it showed up -- fortunately it hasn't made it into the higher quality software yet. Show it to me in Capture 1 for example. But I expect it will show up eventually. I'm not unrealistic, just disappointed.

By the way, what Vibrance actually does in LR/ACR isn't what you've been showing or advocating.

Joe


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## unpopular

I forgot about that feature. What exactly does it do, anyway?


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## unpopular

jowensphoto said:


> unpopular said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well. Those are HDR.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's what I thought  No HDR in GIMP.
Click to expand...


Nope, but there is Luminance HDR and Photivo which allows for some tone mapping and HDR-esque local contrast adjustment.


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## unpopular

Here is a tutorial on "Fake HDR" (local contrast) in Photivo, apply this to RAW files before importing into GIMP to avoid banding and noise. The end result is a little goofy, but some intermediates are good examples:

Fake HDR - photivo wiki


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## unpopular

Ysarex said:


>



What's even more interesting is looking at if from a distance, and slowly walking closer.

Anyway, enough parlor tricks. I agree that implementing these concepts has always been difficult, and without directly being able to manipulate HSL/HSV data while seeing what you're actually doing, it's even harder.


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## unpopular

There used to be a program called Asiva Photo that would have been very promising.  I do not know if it's still available.


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## Ysarex

unpopular said:


> I forgot about that feature. What exactly does it do, anyway?



What it does is increase/decrease color saturation disproportionately. It leaves already saturated colors alone and raises/lowers the saturation of lower/higher saturated colors. In other words bringing all colors up/down to a more even saturation level -- an unrealistic effect if you're photographing the natural world. It's Adobe exclusive so far as I know. My gripe with it isn't that it exists, it's where Adobe put it and how it so often gets abused for that reason. In LR/ACR it's right there under basic controls and in Photoshop it shows up under Image/Adjustments. My students lean on the bleepin' thing constantly. Then I ask them, "what specifically did that do to your photo?" They're clueless. "Does it have any negative effects?" (it's a major noise generator and will eventually begin to posterize tone response). More clueless. So I yell at them, "What are you trying to do? You want to become bleepin' fauxtographers?!" I think part of the problem is in the very terminology. Vibrance isn't helping my students understand what that tool does. It's the wrong word for what the adjustment does and since it really isn't a basic adjustment it belongs over in the Filter section.

After doing scores of different things to photos in this thread Peano reminded me that this Vibrance control has been available in Photoshop/LR for years and yet what this Vibrance control actually does is one thing he never did as an example. Duh, my point.

I've got nothing against making a photo "pop." I'm just suggesting we'll have greater repeatable success if we use meaningful words with meaningful methods behind them -- otherwise we end up using horrid Gucci ads with alien colored skies as examples of "pop" and can't explain what in fact is "pop."

Joe

P.S. To avoid the (pretty major) noise build up that Vibrance produces you can achieve nearly the same effect (superior I think) by switching the photo into Lab and using Levels -- equally pull in the end sliders of the "a" and "b" channels.

Jess, heads up! If you do want to play around with decomp in GIMP try this: Decompose a photo in GIMP to the LAB model. Again you'll get a B&W of your photo -- should look washed out. Go to Windows/Dockable Dialog and select Layers. Note the two layers "A" and "B." Click on layer "A" to select it and then from the Colors menu select Levels. Pull the two end sliders in the same amount -- try 15 units for each; so 255 becomes 240 and 0 becomes 15. Do the same for the "B" layer and then recompose the photo. Once the photo is recomposed go to Colors/Levels to tweak the overall appearance -- may need to pull the midpoint slider to the right some.

You can experiment with more or less than 15 units and eventually you can experiment with altering "A" layer only or "B" layer only or use different unit values for each.


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## Ysarex

unpopular said:


> jowensphoto said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> unpopular said:
> 
> 
> 
> Well. Those are HDR.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's what I thought  No HDR in GIMP.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Nope, but there is Luminance HDR and Photivo which allows for some tone mapping and HDR-esque local contrast adjustment.
Click to expand...


This is a fairly inexpensive purchase and offers one of the best  bang/buck combinations if you want to tone-map photos. It's works better  if you can feed it a Raw file and it works best if you can feed it  multiple Raw files over a bracket range. However it will work with  camera JPEGs.

Oloneo HDRengine

Joe


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## unpopular

Ysarex said:


> unpopular said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> jowensphoto said:
> 
> 
> 
> That's what I thought  No HDR in GIMP.
> 
> 
> 
> Nope, but there is Luminance HDR and Photivo which allows for some tone mapping and HDR-esque local contrast adjustment.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> This is a fairly inexpensive purchase and offers one of the best  bang/buck combinations if you want to tone-map photos.Joe
Click to expand...

Uhm. Luminance is free. Is there some reason why people don't seem to want to accept it?


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## jowensphoto

Worked with the HSL technique again, with some subtle yet pleasing results. I added a couple layers in different modes to fine tune.

Original
View attachment 12524

Edited


I tried to figure out a different crop, but I couldn't include all the elements I wanted. So the original stayed.


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## jowensphoto

Thanks for all of the HDR suggestions. I've always wanted to try it out, but don't want to be "that guy" (well, girl in my case).


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## unpopular

jowensphoto said:


> Worked with the HSL technique again, with some subtle yet pleasing results. I added a couple layers in different modes to fine tune.



The difference is very subtle. What exactly do you have in mind for this image; what are your expectations for how it should look?

----

There is nothing wrong with HDR or even tone mapping. As you know, I'm a pretty traditional photographer, but I have been known to use it. I prefer exposure fusion (see Enfuse - PanoTools.org Wiki), but I've worked with tone mapping as well. 

The hard part is getting past the technique and using it in a productive way. But there is no need to shy away from it for the sake of it's bad reputation. High Dynamic Range techniques both digital and in the darkroom, are, and always have been, useful tools.


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## jowensphoto

The photo I used is part of my problem. It doesnt have range really worth messing with. I was excited about it because it's my first "day at night" shot.

I'm heading to the outer banks here in a few weeks and hope to get some great sunset photos. I'd like to fine tune the technique in the mean time.


HDR is probably the route I'll take this, but I plan to stay away from overcooked and cliche.


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## jowensphoto

I am reading up on EF. I downloaded Hugin earlier, it was a suggested freeware program for HDR.

Looks like I have a lot to work with!!


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## jowensphoto

correction, I downloaded hugin for panos. I'm not sure how I'd go about EF with it... on to figure it out!


ETA: Anyone interested in Hugin should know that unless you use the assistant feature and have shot with nearly perfect parallax, it's a bit of a learning curve. However, the wiki is good: Hugin FAQ - PanoTools.org Wiki


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## unpopular

Using hugin to get to enfuse is like cutting butter with a chainsaw, I think EnfuseGUI is probably a better solution for simply compiling EF.


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## jowensphoto

LOL great analogy. I will add that software to my collection. It was also mentioned in some of my research.

For the HDR, I found some donationware called Photonaut. One review did a side by side comparison of it with PS. The PS version preserved more highlight detail, but Photonaut is incredibly realistic. I am counting down the time until my lunch break so I can play with it.


It probably seems like I've been asking a lot of questions about different techniques/gear lately: HDR, EF, panoramas, different lenses, tripods/accessories.

Truth is, I'm stuck in an MWAC rut. Portraits aren't inspiring me at the moment and I am working to create my first real piece of art that I can be proud of, maybe even hang on my wall (or someone else's!). There are a few images I can see in my mind that I plan to capture. Spray and Pray simply won't work for this, something I've been planning for a couple months. Learning new skills and techniques are the only ways I can make this happen.


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## unpopular

Have you tried Luminace yet?

I keep mentioning it to people around here, and it just seems to get getting ignored! WHY?

As far as your rut, I think new techniques can hold your interest and add more tools to the bag. The issue is more likely going to be subject matter. Play around with some new ideas, it'll work out.


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## jowensphoto

Downloaded Luminance yesterday! I didn't realize how much free, open source software was available for photography/digital art. 

Being in a creative rut sucks, though I'm feeling a little better in the past week or two since giving up the train of thought that it will never end. I've been trying to look at the world around me from more of an abstract POV, which personally, is hard; I'm a very concrete, type A thinker. It's amazing how a small change of perception can improve the creative process.

Open-mindedness is also apparently key; techniques that I used to look down on now seem more useful than ever.


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## 480sparky

jowensphoto said:


> ............For the HDR, I found some donationware called Photonaut. .........



You mean PictureNaut?



unpopular said:


> Have you tried Luminace yet?......



Luminance.


Then there's FDRTools.


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## jowensphoto

Yes, picturenaut!! You'd never know I've already drank a pot of coffee...

Have Luminance, need to work with it though. I'll check out the other you suggested as well.


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## 480sparky

Luminance is my first choice, then PictureNaut.


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## jowensphoto

Funny, I have them listed in that order on my desktop


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