I have taken a picture using a polarizer to deepen the blue of the sky in a picture I am using for the Deep Focus Challenge. When I posted the picture in DPC and viewed it the deep blue looks something like paint flowing downwards with some lavender and purple contamination. I have tried Neat Image and selective Gaussian Blur to try to reduce this contamination but it doesn't eliminate it to my satisfaction. I would like a nice sharp consistent blue sky. I would post the picture but I still plan to use it. Any suggestions?
I have the same problem. I don't have the solution, though. Resizing in increments seems to help a little. Usually, I just give up and post a different photo. Maybe someone can help us both.
Can either of you provide some details? Are you on Macs or PCs? Using Photoshop? It would help if I could see the problem, but the shot posted looks fine.
Maybe it's our monitors. I have an older ViewSonic flat screen 17".
Last August, I asked for help on this one. I gave up.
Edit: I didn't mean that nobody helped me. I meant I couldn't duplicate what they suggested. The more I tried, the worse the photo looked. The original looks solid blue. It's just when I try to resize for web.
I don't see any problem with the second photo either, just some slight noise. Could be your monitor or Photoshop preview settings. Try looking at the same shot on another monitor.
Make sure your monitor is set to truecolor (24-bit or 32-bit) color depth. I know it's a simple thing, but you'd be surprised how many folks are still running lower bit depth settings and trying to do photo work. It doesn't work well.
I adjusted the color balance. I reduced the magenta and increased the cyan and blue. All of the adjustments were under 10(so they are very slight adjustments). It looks as if you have some magenta and possibly some red in the sky. Used psp. If you have critical colors in the rest of the photo, you might want to work on the sky on a different layer.
Yes Marjo, that's what I see...alot of blotchyness (is that a word?). PCody's adjustment looks alot better. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I will try them out.
Funny, scalvert.
My voting is averaging around 5. !?
I guess, I'm a simple person, Kirbic. Old, too. How do I check my monitor's truecolor setting?
Hi Marj,
I assume you're on a PC; if so, then right-click on the desktop and click on "Properties". When the Display Properties dialog comes up, click on "Settings", and check the Color Quality. If it is set to 16-bit, try changing the setting to 24-bit or 32-bit. You may not have both 24-and 32-bit choices, depending on your graphics adapter and operating system. Either one should be adequate, 32-bit is preferred.
A final note, with some graphics adapters you may notice that it is not possible to set the highest color quality and the highest available resolution at the same time, due to memory limitations on the graphics card.
Sorry. But you might have to run it thru ni after you do the color adjustments. I think the blotchiness is caused by luminence(sp)in the blue channel. It's a pretty common problem for most digital pictures. You could isolate that channel and run it by itself thru ni or whatever noise filters you have in ps, then recombine them.
Da! Isn't everyone happy that I'm around to ask all these questions and make myself look stupid, so you don't have to?
I changed the setting to truecolor and it corrected the blotchy bands. I still see some noise on these two photos, but like pcody suggested, Neat Image would correct that.
Kirbic, What does the 256 color setting do? and thanks for the help.
Da! Isn't everyone happy that I'm around to ask all these questions and make myself look stupid, so you don't have to?
I changed the setting to truecolor and it corrected the blotchy bands. I still see some noise on these two photos, but like pcody suggested, Neat Image would correct that.
Kirbic, What does the 256 color setting do? and thanks for the help.
Hi Marj,
the 256-color setting is a very limited color pallette, as you might expect it can only display 256 different colors on-screen at one time. It's basically there for compatibility with some very old software. On systems with newer graphics cards, you maynot even find this setting available.
If you want a laugh, try setting your display to 256 colors and looking at some of the winning photos. Ick!
