Hello, I took this of the amaryllis that my wife got.
Is it too much processing?
I used camera raw with these adjustments:
White Balance: Daylight
Exposure: -.55
Recovery: 0
Blacks: 5
Brightness: 50
Contrast: 25
Clarity: 30
Vibrance: 0
Saturation: 3
With that much red, it is a real challenge for web display in the sRGB colorspace. Here is my shot. I took took the background all the way to black. I think it creates a more dramatic image and allows for more focus on the flower.
ACR settings were as follows:
Color temp: 5600 (I assumed something close to flash/daylight)
Color tint: +5
Exposure: -2.15 (so the red channel doesn't clip and lose detail)
Contrast: 0
Highlights: +13
Shadows: +3
Whites +17
Blacks: -37
Clarity: +17
Vibrance: +23
Saturation: 0
Luminance NR: 15
Color NR: 25
I did the sharpening in Photoshop with Focus Magic but you could use ACR. I doubt if you would see much difference. I also recovered shadows very slightly with the shadows/highlights tool in PS but I could have done that in ACR as well.
I used Camera Neutral for the Camera Profile in ACR. I find that usually does a pretty good job, particularly for high-sat images when a custom profile is not available.
You could make it less or more dramatic if you wanted. The important thing is to keep your eye on the red channel for clipping.
Eyeball, thanks for giving us some details - I am impressed with the results, you even got the yellow of the stamen! One question though: where do I find the Luminance NR 15 and Color NR 25 in ACR?
beebibi wrote:
Eyeball, thanks for giving us some details - I am impressed with the results, you even got the yellow of the stamen! One question though: where do I find the Luminance NR 15 and Color NR 25 in ACR?
Best, Bee
Thanks. The noise reduction sliders are on the Detail tab of ACR. Really, this image had very little noise, particularly with the clipping of the background. It might work just as well with no NR.
Thanks for your patience....