Editing color images is really hard. It’s surprisingly hard when you think of the fact that the world around us is full of colors. What could be easier than to record them and present them just as they were?
Turns out that’s far from easy. Today’s image is optimized for the screen. Well, all my images are and if I need to print one, I make a version optimized for paper. Sometimes it does not matter, sometimes it makes a big difference. Here it’s the big difference.
The dynamic range of computer monitors is pretty good these days, but it is not a match for what our eyes encounter on autumn afternoons when colored foliage is back-illuminated by a dying sun.
There is not much you can do. You can do tone mapping (aka HDR), but you end up with something that does not look real. It does not glow. Don’t get me wrong, HDR is OK for many applications, only not for this. If it’s got to glow, you have to replace tonal range by saturation. That’s what I did here 🙂
The Song of the Day is “Really Hard” from the 1986 James album “Stutter”. Hear it on YouTube.