Making "Ballroom in B&W": Adventures in Using Calculations & Contrast Masking
I think this image is decent fodder for some blog discussion, primarily because of its imperfections and the degree of difficulty in obtaining a usable print. And I very much like the final print. Perhaps all the more because of the blood left on the field of battle in getting there. (You can find the regular portfolio version of the image here: http://www.photocritiq.com/set?setid=690#photoid=27032)
Problematic is a pretty good adjective for this image’s origin file. That said, what’s useful to note about this photograph’s “development” is that:
- 80% of the heavy lifting in post processing was done in the raw converter. Unusual and still somewhat startling for me. I have no doubt that the ability to edit in linear gamma made the difference in executing a usable print since most of the work was done in shadow and highlight areas.
- I used calculations to fine tune the monochromatic conversion, after initially using a global Black & White adjustment layer in Photoshop. Calculations are the wild and woolly underpinnings of Photoshop and few people use them in their unadorned form…but there are nuances of image control available in calculations (or Apply Image…) that do not exist in the more polite user interfaces of the program.
- I used a localized contrast mask to slightly compress the upper third gray tones in the final print file. To my eye, contrast masks, (in moderation), often bring subtle details to fuller life by dampening edge contrast but without loss of sharpness.
Here’s the unadjusted raw file with EXIF information:
The issues here are obvious. The scene’s dynamic range exceeds the capability of the sensor and detail has been lost in the overloaded pixels of the highlighted floor. Shadows are pretty deep, despite the + ⅓ of a stop exposure bias. Lens flare takes an ugly turn and because this was taken through glass, at an angle, there are small reflections everywhere. In short, a mess. But, I liked the shot. The perspective of the drawn shadows and draped fabric in the overbearing flood of light is very compelling to me.
So I worked on the file in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and managed to make the image worse than what I started with. Stop, put aside. A week later, I tried again and reached new lows in post processing. Stop, put aside. Another week later, my confidence in editing refreshed, I tried a third conversion. Better but nothing that I’d care to print. Stop, put aside. Now I am thinking about the damn image in my spare moments, trying to visualize what I want in the print. Two weeks and three other photo shoots go by and I try a fourth time, having erased all vestiges of the prior efforts. This time I get something workable but no dunk shot. It looks like this:
Big moves in highlight recovery and fill light to compress the tonal range. Color temperature cooled a bit to offset yellows. Blacks boosted to keep some punch in the image. It all looks pretty prosaic now but it took me a long time to get here.
Here are the adjustments made in parametric and point curves. Changes in the parametric quadrants echo the basic adjustments, i.e. compressing tonal range. The point curve, however, was used to restore some of the lost contrast.
And here are the HSL adjustments to pull back the sky’s “blues”. :
Once in Photoshop, edits were comparatively forthright. Here’s the layers palette for work file:
More light was tone-mapped to the interior. I boosted midtone contrast, and then converted to black and white, using the infrared preset as a starting point. I used a multiply blur on the lower-than-midtones and then went to work on the flare spots with the intent to mitigate rather than eliminate their impact.
Because I was still lacking detail in the highlight areas, I elected to use calculations in multiply blending mode and localized to a bright-lights luminosity mask. This did a nice job of bringing back some detail to the burned areas.
The work file was finalized with a mild dose of smart sharpen and local contrast enhancement (unsharp mask at a wide radius), with the blend-if sliders set to the midtones.
I duplicated the work file, flattened it, and set the file format to TIFF for the print version.
After setting up my soft proof, I used a 50% opacity contrast mask on the upper third of the image to further even-out the gray tones. The “recipe” for a contrast mask looks like this:
And the print file layers, with output sharpening, looks like this:
which outputs an enchanting 18 X 12 print.
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