Helen, leaving DxO aside for a moment (John doesn't use it), do you see any of the issues I've suggested are a problem?
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Estuary Mud
- Thread starter John2
- Start date
The name is Joanna
The problem is trying to capture contre-jour with specular highlights. It's hard to do and the only tool I have found that is capable of making it easier is PhotoLab with its FilmPack add-in.
Sorry, but I abandoned Adobe's ransomware long ago. If I need pixel editing, I use Affinity Photo, which is now totally free. But, for RAW images, DxO's optical modules and noise reduction are far superior to anything else on the market (and that is not just my opinion - read the reviews and comparisons)
Surely, if it makes life easier, why not use it?
Toby you have to remember that virtually every screen is different. There may be different levels of contrast, brightness and the screen itself may be sightly tinted. I have a Dell laptop that has an obvious warm tone which may look nice on my screen but on others it may throw up the wrong idea of what it was like on the original. The only screen I really trust is my desktop 36" which is as far as I get it neutral.
Sure, but I'm perfectly confident that both of my screens are more than up to the job, both are calibrated, and the best and youngest of the two is used entirely effectively to work up exhibition-level prints. The quality of my screens has absolutely no bearing on the issues that I have raised in this thread.
Sure, Joanna (my apologies), but you seem to be entirely missing my point. John doesn't use DxO, so holding forth on the attributes of DxO isn't going to help in any way at all. I don't think he uses Adobe either, for what it's worth.The name is Joanna
The problem is trying to capture contre-jour with specular highlights. It's hard to do and the only tool I have found that is capable of making it easier is PhotoLab with its FilmPack add-in.
Sorry, but I abandoned Adobe's ransomware long ago. If I need pixel editing, I use Affinity Photo, which is now totally free. But, for RAW images, DxO's optical modules and noise reduction are far superior to anything else on the market (and that is not just my opinion - read the reviews and comparisons)
Surely, if it makes life easier, why not use it?
Please yourself, John, but it might be worth reminding yourself that this is a learning forum, in which members post photographs for critical appraisal by other members. You yourself have acknowledged that you are, in your own words upstream 'not the best processor', but you seem curiously resistant to accepting critical appraisal that is actually critical, and in so doing close yourself off to actually learning anything and, by extension, improving your processing and becoming a better processor; the upshot being that you post a lot of photographs (you are probably the most active forum member) that repeat exactly the same processing issues.
Incidentally 'contre-jour' defines as having the sun behind the subject, not to the side of the subject. Side lighting will indeed emphasise texture. I acknowledge that your photograph appears to be actually side-lit, but you actually used the expression 'contre-jour' to describe it.
Sorry but we live in France and I am fluent enough in French to teach photography. Contre-jour can be used for any shot where the light is primarily in front of the camera, regardless of the angle.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/french-english/contre-jour
Primarily in front of the camera is distinct from side lighting, either way. I think that most photographers would define contre-jour as photographing into the sun, with the sun in the frame either centrally or to one side or another, possibly just shielded by an object in the frame; or just outside the top of the frame.
Sorry, John, you've shut the conversation down without acknowledging that there is any meat at all in my original critique of your photograph. You've done this before, and I think not only with me. I don't understand why. It seems a shame.
Yours may be calibrated to your requirements and other contributors may have there screens calibrated to what my look good to them so you really need to take this into consideration with your sometimes cutting comments.
John, my screens have no bearing on this at all - they're to all intents and purposes irrelevant to the conversation. The fact that they're 10 years old was merely used as an excuse to shut the conversation down.
I'm sorry if I sound cutting, I don't mean to. If I have anything useful to offer in regard of constructive critique, that's all I wish to do, but it can get a bit frustrating when all I hear are the ricochets of my words as they ping off an impenetrable wall.
Neutral isn't a matter of opinion. It should be precisely calibrated, using something like the Calibrite puck and software.
For printing, the "norm" is 80cd/m², 5600°K. Similar for displaying on screens.
If you have calibrated your screen, if an image looks wrong to someone else, it is their screen that needs calibrating.
Please rearrange the following - "grandmother teach suck how to eggs don't"
What you have stated is a very narrow definition, more than likely dreamt up by some British club judge to define yet another "rule" that they will then enslave club members to adhere to.
Whereas, if you discuss such matters with real French photographers, who invented the phrase in their language, you will find I am right. Contre-jour, when used by a francophone, means against the light, not against the sun. Jour doesn't just mean day.
If in doubt, look up contre-jour images on French stock sites. You might be surprised
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Joanna, I am a grandfather who also happened to cut a good number of his photographic teeth whilst living in France many years ago. I know what contre-jour means, and in case of doubt have already posted a definition and translation to you upstream, given not by 'some British club judge', but by the Cambridge Dictionary. To allay any further doubt I have followed your kind advice and checked on Google images, many of which are drawn from French sites, and they all conform precisely to the definition that I gave in my reply to you earlier. In all honesty, I think we might be differing over mere semantics.
John described his image as contre-jour, then offered a definition of the effect of side lighting on texture. In fairness, I think his image might just conform, to some degree, to both, given the highly reflective character of wet tidal mud, but it's difficult to tell. That's why I would have loved to have seen the unprocessed colour file. Alas, it is not to be, so none of us have learned anything.
PS I would agree with 'against the light', and in fact changed it from light to sun in editing. My bad. The sun, as it happens, tends to feature strongly, but no, it isn't in itself essential to meet the definition.
Toby, I've shut the conversation down only because it is getting out of hand. You've had nothing but polite responses from me. In return you have resorted to rudeness, insults and now the conversation has morphed into a pedantic argument over the definition of "Contre-Jour". I introduced the phrase when I described the image as a "straight forward contre-jour shot" where the emphasis is on the image being straight forward. Call it what you want. The fact is that the angle of the light has enhanced both texture and contrast. It's time to stop Toby.