Posts Tagged ‘Cathedral Park’

Cathedral Park, PDX

The northern gateway of Portland, OR is marked by a most beautiful structure named the St. Johns Bridge.  The steel suspension bridge spans the Willamette River between the Portlandian neighborhood of St. Johns on the east side and the industrial district the dominates the waterfront area near the Linnton neighborhood on the west side.  The bridge, completed in 1931, was designed according to a Gothic Cathedral-like theme, with a pair of large spire-topped towers, distinctively arched supports, and a high, long arching center span (1,200 ft).

Cathedral Park is located under the east end of the Bridge, and provides excellent views of the bridge supports all the way to the eastern main tower.  Not a large park, but a unique one.

Shooting the arches and the underside of the bridge presents all sort of challenges, chief among them being the high dynamic range scene generated by the (always) strongly backlit subject.  As the rival smartphone vendors seem to claim constantly these days…we have an app for that…  Actually, we have two new apps for this, which are HDR Efex Pro by Nik Software and the new version of Photomatix Pro (4.0), by HDRsoft.  I’ll have  a few comments on these software packages in the next few entries.

Images in this entry were recorded using the Nikon D3s, and the AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR, the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED, and the AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II lens.  Bracketing for the HDR images of the bridge pillar and the support arches consisted of 5 shots at +2 EV, +1EV, 0 EV, -1 EV, and -2 EV.  These two HDR images were converted to BW using Nik Silver Efex  Pro 2.  The image of the Camellia Bush  is not HDR, but is a single color image, converted to BW using Nik Silver Efex Pro, masked to let some of the color of the flowers show through.

Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn. No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.

Nik Silver Efex Pro 2: Brightness Tone Controls

In the previous entry (February 28) I introduced the image above, which is a shot of a Camellia bush I converted to BW using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 (SEP2).  In this entry, I’ll review the major functions of the global and parametric Brightness tone controls.  In all cases the operation range of the tone controls ranges from -100% to +100%.

 

Brightness Tone Controls

In addition to global control of brightness, the Brightness control now has four parametric control elements: Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows, all of which work in the way in which we should expect, and in addition, a new function, Dynamic Brightness, has been added.

We first consider the effect of the global Brightness adjustment.  I’ll show the reference image first, followed by global Brightness set at -25, followed by global Brightness set at +25.

Reference Image (global Brightness set at 0%)

 

For the image below, global Brightness was set at -25%.

 

For the image below, global Brightness was set at +25%.

The global Brightness tone controls thus function as one would image, adjusting the overall brightness of the image.

 

Parametric Brightness Tone Controls

The parametric Brightness tone controls provide a significant improvement in the control over image brightness, and should reduce or eliminate the need to make selective adjustments to image brightness.  To demonstrate the parametric controls,. I’ll first again show the reference image, followed by variations in the Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows parametric controls.

 

Highlights Control

Reference Image: Global Brightness control at 0%, Highlights control at 0%

 

Highlights control set at -100%

 

Highlights control set at +100%

The intrinsic luminosity range present in the source image make even relatively extreme Highlights changes seem quite subtle.  The effect will obviously be more useful in images that are composed of significant highlights.

 

Midtones Controls

Reference Image: Global Brightness control at 0%, Midtones control at 0%

 

Midtones control set at -50%

 

Midtones control set at +50%

The source image is dominated by midtones, and therefore the influence of the Midtones control makes relatively significant changes in that luminosity range.

 

Shadows Controls

Reference Image: Global Brightness control at 0%, Shadows control at 0%

 

Shadows control set at -50%

 

Shadows control set at +50%

The source image contains significant amounts of shadow regions, and the influence of the Shadows control also makes significant changes in that luminosity range.

 

Dynamic Brightness

This tone adjustment control is new to SEP2.  The description of Dynamic Brightness found on the Nik SEP2 website indicates that:

Moving the slider to the left will darken the image overall, while keeping highlight detail. Moving the slider to the right will brighten the image overall, while keeping shadow detail.

With the source image used here, I find that moving the Dynamic Brightness slider toward negative values seems to darken the shadows differentially more than the midtones and highlights.  Oppositely, moving the Dynamic Brightness slider toward positive values, seems to lighten highlights differentially more than the midtones and shadows.  It’s an interesting tool, but I’ll have to use it much before I can say how generally useful it ends up being.

Reference Image: Global Brightness control at 0%, Dynamic Brightness control at 0%

 

Dynamic Brightness control set at +50%

 

Dynamic Brightness control set at +50%

 

Level and Curves Adjustments

Under the Film Types control section there is an option for making Photoshop Curves-like adjustments.  This adjustment tool was very popular in the original version of Silver Efex.  The parametric controls overlap significantly with this tool, however it is still a powerful and intuitive tone adjustment tool.

 

In the next entry, we consider the new Contrast control set.

Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn. No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.

The High Priestess in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

Something new has appeared in the photographic image processing world…  We’ve been waiting with anticipation for the release of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.  Was it worth the wait?  Yes, but first let me say that the big recent improvement in the Nik software suite was the release of 64-bit executables.  Anyway, back on track, and yeah, the just-released Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 really does improve on the original.  Naturally, within the next few days, all the tech-oriented photobloggers will wax philosophical about the awesomeness of the new version.  Greatest thing ever?  Nah, but worth the $100 upgrade cost.

As keen as I might be to provide a review of the cool new features, as you can plainly see, I got something even better to show – Why the HP of course!  I did use most all of the new feature set to generate the final image though, including Dynamic Brightness,  Soft Contrast, the new Toning controls (Sepia 21), a touch of Vignette, and the Type 7 Image Border.  An Inner Bevel was applied to the image after placement in the background.  For reference, the original unprocessed image is shown below.

The image of the HP at Cathedral park in PDX was recorded at around noon on February 20, 2011, using the Nikon D3s and the AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II lens at 70mm.  Exposure was f/8 and 1/20s, ISO at 200.

Copyright 2011 Peter F. Flynn. No usage permitted without prior written consent. All rights reserved.