Settings?

[sydneysnana]

This is my new puppy....... I'm still learning my Canon Rebel XTi. I have noticed that in many pictures it's hard to get his liver color to show. This picture has a full histogram range, but it is dark and flat. Why is that? What would you use to adjust in PSE?



Thanks

Michelle

[Jeff Perry]

Michelle, a very nice picture, but the exposure seems a little off (underexposed) hence the "too dark" darks. I would suspect that the white balance is also a tad off, hence the "not the right liver color" hair.

If your camera was set to Auto WB it may have been fooled by what appears to have been a shaded scene. Obviously if it was set to Sun and the shot was in the shade, well you get the picture (pun intended).

Fortunately both can be quickly fixed in Adobe Camera Raw. Assuming you have it installed with Elements, start up Elements, and go to File>Open As> (not that is not Open, but Open As), and assuming it is a JPG file format.

In the dialog box at the bottom should be a drop down menu called Format - select Camera Raw, and the navigate to your image and select it.

ACR will open up, and you can adjust Exposure and Temperature (White Balance) to correct both the darkness and the color cast.

After you have it corrected, select Open Image and the file will be transfered with all those settings in tact to Elements for further tweaking.

If the Camera Raw plug-in is not installed, we'll have to point you to Adobe for a free download. In the mean time you can also correct the image in Elements almost as easily. Write back if you have any other problems.

Jeff

[Not4wood]

Or to see if I can help in camera, while shooting this you mentioned looking at the Histogram and you thought it was fine. While looking around did you also look at the image on the back of the camera? While doing this I zoom in close to see what the image details look like to see if I have to shoot it again. What also helps is what Jeff has mentioned, that if you have shot this in Raw you can correct a lot of the images after the fact including these kinds of problems.

I have also started to play with the WB settings while I shoot. You can set the WB for your camera to Shade and this will help a lot in these situations. But you have to now be careful, while you walk around shooting keeping an eye on your aperture/shutter speed combination and glancing at your ISO settings to make sure everything is correct while walking around you now have to keep an eye on your White Balance setting as well. Moving this as to situation instead of keeping it in Auto Mode will make a very big differance in your end results.

[Jeff Perry]

One minor clarification to Not4Wood's great advice, the latest version of ACR will allow you to make all the same adjustments I suggested to a JPG image. While there are other advantages to capturing images in RAW, you do not have to shoot in RAW format in order to use Adobe Camera Raw.

Jeff

[Not4wood]

Originally Posted by Jeff Perry

One minor clarification to Not4Wood's great advice, the latest version of ACR will allow you to make all the same adjustments I suggested to a JPG image. While there are other advantages to capturing images in RAW, you do not have to shoot in RAW format in order to use Adobe Camera Raw.

Jeff

Yeah, did I say that?? I've been seeing this, and the last time I read an article that mentioned this it says once you are ready to go to this image go to the File/Open As and this will point you to ACR with your image.

Doing this will help, you can change the WB of this Image here. But, it really wont compare to having a Raw Image with all the Details in the Under and Over Exposed areas.

[Jeff Perry]

Not4Wood, I agree with you that shooting RAW files leave you with a much more flexible format to tinker with, however, my point was not that JPGs are better (or worse) than RAW, but that ACR allows a number of quick fixes to both RAW an d JPGs, IMHO, that are better and certainly faster to do than in PSE or CS3. It is akin to the fixes available to both JPGs and RAW in Lightroom (not surprisingly considering they both hail from the same source code).

You can adjust WB, Exposure, Fill Light, and add pop with Clarity and Vibrance, literally in a matter of seconds. I still haven't been able to duplicate the Fill Light function in PSE without a lot of mask and adjustment layers. Its just a better way of making minor adjustments to you out-of-camera images.

Jeff

[Not4wood]

Speaking of ACR, matter of fact I just found on the net that a new version of Camera Raw is out.

Seems that ACR is turning out to be a major player as well in making adjustments to JPG's as well as Raw files.
Its that little tweeking of stuff that matters, but for the extreme problems having the same shot in JPG or Raw when your trying to make the shot work, I would rather have all of the problems in Raw so they can be fixed and not have to bury the shot because the details aren't there because of the exposure was done in JPG.

[sydneysnana]

Thanks you for the answers. I have finally had a sec. to play with them. I am looking at the RAW plug in in PSE5. Wow, now I have something else to learn!! I do look at the picture through the LCD screen on the back, but again I must not see results as well as when I download. I will work on that. I will be more aware of WB setting. I tend to leave on auto. Think I'll go out and take some pictures now so I can practice.

AGAIN, thank you for the help.
Michelle

[Edmund]

Mark, what version did you find on Adobe Camera Raw ? All I found was Camera Raw version 4.4.1 which was released back in April 08.
Eddie

[Ric Cisson]

Eddie, what Mark is referring to is a Beta version. ACR 4.5 has not been "officially" released at this time. However, if you would be interested in trying the Beta version of ACR 4.5 here is the link http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_4.5 I suspect that it may be possible for ACR 4.5 to be released in conjunction with LR 2 soon. At this time it is available for CS3, according to the system requirements. I have not tried to install in PSE 6. One of the noticiable additions, or changes, is the Clarity slider. It now has negative values for softness, particularly nice when working with Portraits.