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Original,
non edited image from digital camera |
After
cropping, color adjustments and clean up (larger
view ) |
History
of Sample Photo
Originally
this car was loaned to me from the owner, Jason Baskett, for purposes
of taking a cover photo for Sports Z Magazine's Spring 2003 issue per
a request from the editors. See the cover shot of that issue to see a
very different type of photo of this car. That shot required me to wait
around all day for a unique 30 minute time slot at another location so
out of boredom, I started to drive the car around taking more and more
photos of it due to it being painted in one of my favorite 240Z stock
colors, sometimes referred to as "Mexican Orange". Observing
that the sun was soon to be in a position to set up a shot at one of my
favorite locations near my shop, I drove it over and parked it in the
above location to see what I could pull off.
When
photographying in a location where most background elements and and lighting
condtions are very good for purposes intended, inevitably images straight
out of a digital camera can be less than satisfying even if angle of view
of car and lighting angle are relatively good. Photo of th orange car
above is a good case in point.
I
knew that this location and the time of day would both lend themselves
well to capturing the classic outlines of the Z car and traditional slot
wheels associated with this era of Z car. The intense complimentary colors
of the blue sky with faint clouds above and clean looking green grass
below it would look dramatic next to the bright orange car framed between
the two and that the whole would come across as colorful and striking,
while at the same time cause the orange car to stand out in the photo
as the main subject.
The
crowning touch to pulling this shot together was the time of day and angle
of sunlight hitting the car. Being late in the afternoon, I knew that
the low angle of sunlight, coming at a near 45º from one side and above)
into the car from the upper left, would light up enough of the lower body
and metal wheel area as to cause the car to be well "spotlighted".
Fortunately the angle of the camera to the car and the sun hitting the
car did not result in harsh and ugly glare reflecting off the car's body
so I took a few shots.
Unfortunately,
the one main drawback to this whole set up was the color of the sun's
light in the late afternoon. As the sun gets lower in the sky, it's color
changes first toward the yellowish tones and then to orangish qualities.
In the non-edited photo you can especially see the downside result of
this yellowish light mixing into the blue sky, the compliment color to
yellow. The yellowish light is hitting minute dust particles in the atmosphere
causing yellowish dust artifacts to mix with the blue sky background to
form a kind of muddy, cruddy contamination of the clean, royal blue effect
I would prefer to be next to the wonderfully clean looking, orange paint.
Digital Image
Edit approach
The
most obvious problem with the original image is the dull colored and soft
look of a non enhanced, non sharpened digital image, straight out of a
typical consumer level digital camera. There were two main factors that
contributed to his dull look.
1.
Image was saved in the default JPG compressed format typical of most consumer
level digital cameras. JPG image format is a compression format discards
some color information and pixels originally recorded by the camera's
digital light sensors in order to produce small image file sizes in order
to save many files on a relatively small storage diskas compared to non
compressed formats, such as TIF, which would probably end up image files
10 to 20 times larger.
2.
The yellowish light of the afternoon sun, hitting dust particles in the
air is mixing with the blue sky in background to cause a muddy blue yuck
of a sky.
Steps
toward a solution out of time. To be finished in the future)
This
page last edited
June 26, 2004
-- Eric
Neyerlin - owner of ZPARTS.COM
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Digital
Image Editing
Cleaning up colors & clutter
