With pushing RAW files comes the inherit glow or halo effect in high contrast areas between two objects. Prime examples are where the land, tree branches, or a smoke plume meets the sky. Graduated filters either on the camera lens or applied in Photoshop are rarely an option, for the darkened region is applied to the entire upper portion on the frame; often times containing the main subject matter – which darkens also. There is the workaround by using masking techniques in Photoshop to process the foreground separately from the sky, but it’s not an easy task nor is it convincing. Even if working in color, I set the camera’s EVF to display in monochrome – this helps me to better see luminance values without the influence of color. My cameras yield exceptional JPEG files directly off the memory card, which I use as reference to how the scene originally looked verses how I am interpreting it via post processing in the RAW editor. To some the halos and glowing are non-existent, but to cognizant viewers it quickly becomes a glaring nuisance. It is definitely a pet peeve of mine, although the accepted new look seems to be the current rage.
Matthew
trainrider47 Wrote:
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> One of the issues with shadow recovery is that our
> eyes see the real thing with a wider dynamic range
> than either a printed photo or an image on a
> monitor can reveal. When I look at a loco,
> portions of the image may be dark, but I see the
> detail because my eye can see the full range from
> dark to white. When areas are lightened in an
> image editing program, I can now see the detail
> but the overall image looks somewhat artificial.
>
> There really isn't anyway around this, since the
> choice is to print it dark and lose detail but the
> overall image looks right or lighten areas to
> reveal detail but then the overall image looks
> manipulated. This pretty much falls into the
> range of personal preference. Long time film
> shooters probably prefer less shadow recovery,
> while digital savvy shooters would rather see the
> detail and have accepted the new look.
>
> Michael Allen
