POTD 6 May 2015 - Glass Making

[Mike Farley]

Another photo from Malta, this time at the Ta'Qali Crafts Village which is situated in the buildings of a former RAF airbase. There were not many activities taking place other than at this glassworks. When I indicated to one of the people working there that it was hot where the glass was being made, he showed me the thermometer. 110 degrees centigrade!

Once again, mainly processed in Lightroom. I wanted to emphasise the heat of the glass, so I boosted Clarity and reduced Vibrance, which had the effect of cooling most of the colours without adversely affecting the orange and yellows of the worked glass.

[Mike Farley]

Out of camera shot before Lightroom processing and a bit of work in Photoshop to add a bit of space above the chap's head.

[davidc]

I had guessed how you processed it before reading the description and think it's the right choice, definitely helps the shot.

[Nina]

Your processing worked really well. I have yet to learn more about Clarity and Vibrance. . Thanks for the tips Mike!

[Nina]

I had guessed how you processed it before reading the description and think it's the right choice, definitely helps the shot.

Clever clogs!

[Mike Farley]

Your processing worked really well. I have yet to learn more about Clarity and Vibrance. . Thanks for the tips Mike!

Thanks to Nina and David for their comments. By default, I always set the WB on my cameras to Daylight as I find that it usually gives the best representation of colour for outdoor shots, whatever the lighting conditions. The downside is that images taken indoors can be on the warm side and require some adjustment; it was doing that which lead me to make further changes using the Clarity and Vibrance tools.

Vibrance has a saturation function, but incorporates a clever algorithm so that the cooler tones are changed more than the warmer ones, whereas Saturation affects everything in equal measure. It's both positive and negative values, and in this instance the tones in the glass were still present even when set to -100. Clarity works by changing the contrast in the mid-tones, whereas conventional sharpening works by accentuating the difference between dark and light tones. Clarity also has negative values which introduces a diffuse effect which can work well. I have a POTD shot coming up from the recent Chelsea Flower show where I did just that.*

Clarity and Vibrance both affect tonal values, but in different ways and can be combined, which is probably why they are next to each other in the Presence section of the ACR Basic controls. A while back there was a fashion for a desaturated look with lots of detail which can be achieved by doing what I did here, although I did not push the sliders to the same extremes.

* It might be a while before it appears on the forum as I am still working through a backlog of images and I am posting in the order shots were taken.