Salvage Week - 02/25/2024

[Douglas Sherman]

This is an image of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. I was there in the early morning during the winter so there were almost no other photographers around. I under exposed the image accidently when I really wanted to overexpose it one stop. I never processed the image until now.

Original image.

Processed image

 

[AlanLichty]

The underexposure actually worked in your favor for the sun and distant skies. You got just enough shadow recovery to make it look right. Nice one.

 

[JimFox]

Great job recovering this Doug!

 

[JimFox]

This one is from Havasu Falls in Arizona. It was taken in 2008.

I am not sure why I didn't, but I didn't shoot my normal 1/5th of a sec shutter speed on this image. It was a bit windy, so I was hedging a series of images with the fastest being 1/25th of a sec to freeze the branches from moving.

So I stacked 8 of these from a series of various shutter speeds of 1/15th to 1/25th. I aligned them, made a smart object and went with Median Blend to smooth out the Havasu waterfall. That looked pretty good I thought, but by doing that, the water pour off on the bottom since those ribbons of water moved around a bit, they lost their definition and the bottom pool turned too mushy.

So I then took one frame as a master frame for the sharp branches that was 1/25th of a second, and layer masked the waterfall into that. So far so good. But the 1/25th image, the pour off the water didn't look smooth enough, though I liked the look of the pool. I then blended in one of the 1/15th of a sec shutter speeds just for the pour off water. The exposure difference between 1/25th and 1/15th was negligible in terms of the overall exposure but it made a nice subtle difference in the pour off. (each of those new layers I did an autoalign to keep each of the images lined up as there was some slight movement between them all)

And from there I went on to process the image.

Captured with the Nikon D300.

 

[AlanLichty]

This one is from Havasu Falls in Arizona. It was taken in 2008.

I am not sure why I didn't, but I didn't shoot my normal 1/5th of a sec shutter speed on this image. It was a bit windy, so I was hedging a series of images with the fastest being 1/25th of a sec to freeze the branches from moving.

So I stacked 8 of these from a series of various shutter speeds of 1/15th to 1/25th. I aligned them, made a smart object and went with Median Blend to smooth out the Havasu waterfall. That looked pretty good I thought, but by doing that, the water pour off on the bottom since those ribbons of water moved around a bit, they lost their definition and the bottom pool turned too mushy.

So I then took one frame as a master frame for the sharp branches that was 1/25th of a second, and layer masked the waterfall into that. So far so good. But the 1/25th image, the pour off the water didn't look smooth enough, though I liked the look of the pool. I then blended in one of the 1/15th of a sec shutter speeds just for the pour off water. The exposure difference between 1/25th and 1/15th was negligible in terms of the overall exposure but it made a nice subtle difference in the pour off. (each of those new layers I did an autoalign to keep each of the images lined up as there was some slight movement between them all)

And from there I went on to process the image.

Captured with the Nikon D300.

A lot of work but a very workable result. Nice save.

 

[JimFox]

A lot of work but a very workable result. Nice save.

Thanks Alan! It ended up being more work then I inititally wanted as I have a lot of other photos to work on from Yosemite last week, but once I started, I couldn't stop.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Most often the salvage efforts center around underexposed images and the modern tools are great at recovering the shadows. The overexposed images on the other hand are harder to recover, if at all. One of the tools available is a linear profile which helps in cases where the highlights are not completely blown out.

I ran into this unprocessed file from a moab visit almost a decade ago. Shot with a 5D Mark III.

Original

Processed

 

[AlanLichty]

Most often the salvage efforts center around underexposed images and the modern tools are great at recovering the shadows. The overexposed images on the other hand are harder to recover, if at all. One of the tools available is a linear profile which helps in cases where the highlights are not completely blown out.

I ran into this unprocessed file from a moab visit almost a decade ago. Shot with a 5D Mark III.

Original

Processed

I am somewhat amazed there was this much detail and color in this scene given the untouched original. Nice recovery.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Excellent work, Jameel.

 

[AlanLichty]

Not quite as dramatic a recovery as some of the ones above but this is a scan from Kodachrome 25 slide of Khafre's pyramid taken from just in front of the Sphinx in 1977.

Original scan:

After some quality time in DxO PhotoLab 7 followed by Lightroom and Photoshop:

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice work. Are these drum scans?

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice work. Are these drum scans?

Thanks - the scan was a simple copy stand shot using my 5D MkIV with a a 28-70mm f/2.8 and an extension tube. The camera resolution at 1:1 is tighter than the film grain (Kodachrome 25).