Snowy mountain peak thru 8x40 bino - pls help with processing!

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

These photos were taken from Mt Samaria state park, from a lookout spot facing roughly SE. I believe it's of the snowy peaks of Mt Buller. You can see some man made structures in the photos. If you've ever been there you might recognise them.

The first four images are the same photo with different processing, taken by holding one ocular of a Pentax PCF 8x40 binocular up to the eyepiece of a compact digital camera Fuji A350 (over 20x zoom). The last image shows the best the camera could do with its digital + optical zoom for the same scene (about 12x zoom) - without the bino in front of the lens.

The first image is basically unprocessed. The 2nd and 3rd images are the same photo with RGB levels adjusted differently. I like the contrast of the mountain best in the 2nd image, but the colours are much more natural in the 3rd image. So what I'd like is the contrast of image 2 combined with the colours of image 3. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

I tried decomposing the images into hue, value and saturation and recombining these in different ways. The best I could do is a combination of value from image 2 + hue and saturation from image 3. But the result shown in image 4 is less pleasing than either 2 or 3.

[RB (Andrew)]

Is there anywhere you can post a larger version Steve, I'm having a go at it but prefer a larger file to work with, and a .tiff if possible.

[RB (Andrew)]

Best I could do from the original jpg Steve.

Edit: I can just imagine the M*A*S*H helicopter flying through that scene.

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

Andrew, I'll post a link to the full size version later. I haven't got access to the file right now.

[mickoking]

I'll have a bash with the image tonight. Stay tuned

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

Here is a link to the original jpeg off the camera, 743kb: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jano...c/dscf1520.jpg

Sorry Andrew, tiff is too big. You can always open the jpeg and save-as tif if you like. There is no original tif if that's what you meant. The camera is a basic one and only does jpeg.

[RB (Andrew)]

Cheers Steve, that one will do nicely.
Now if only I can remember what steps to do again.......

[CometGuy]

Adobe Photoshop Elements - Auto levels and then auto color correction + a bit more saturation - thats it! Then a crop around the peak (which I am sure it is Mt Buller - note the triangular structure at the summit and the ski lifts on the left shoulder).

[RB (Andrew)]

Had another little go Steve.
Not sure if it's an improvement but hey it was fun.

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

That's good Andrew, but pls tell me how you did it.

BTW that annoying foreground hill the camera is on is of no interest. I'm only after the mountain top that is about 50km away.

[RB (Andrew)]

Cool Steve.
Is it ok if I write the steps down for you tomorrow, I'm a little beat atm, got my brain in neutral.

[janoskiss (Steve H)]

No! Get to work right away!!!

[RB (Andrew)]

Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

That's it!

[mickoking]

Here ya go steve, my effort

Using Photoshop 6

Filter>sharpen>unsharp mask
layer>new adjustment layer>levels
layer>new adjustment layer>curves
layer>new adjustment layer>colour balance
layer>new adjustment layer>hue/saturation
a bit of dodging and burning on the B/G layer
layer>flatten image

[RB (Andrew)]

Hey I really like that one Micko !
Very nice.

Steve, basically what Mick did is what I do.
The only variation is that I always do the unsharp mask at the very end.
I tried to remove as much of the vignetting as possible by adjusting the hue/sat a lot but it may have been too severe.

Anyway hope that helps.
Do you want the large version uploaded onto the server so you can get it?