Well, I don't mean B&W in that sense.  I mean I'm trying to take a
picture of a black grand piano located in a fairly small room with
white walls, and when the piano looks good, the walls are blazing,
and you feel an urge to reach for sunglasses.

I'll try to solve this with lighting if I can, but I wondered if
there is FREE software that would let me approximately select areas
of the picture with the mouse, which the software would finish
selecting precisely based on color, and then let me change the
color, or at least the brightness, of the selected areas.

I'm using XnView for general corrective stuff, but it doesn't do
anything like that unless there's a plugin somewhere.  So for XP, is
this where Gimp comes in?  Is there anything with less of a learning
curve?  

Free trial of Photoshop, 30 days, Adobe.com.

--
john mcwilliams

On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:21:14 -0600, Peabody

It's cheating to some extent, but you could download the free 14 day
trial of the Topaz "Remask" program.  It's probably the simplest way
to do a knock-out with Photoshop.  I don't know if it's compatible
with Gimp but it seems like it would be.

http://www.topazlabs.com/remask/

The problem that I see is that you would have to familiarize yourself
with program you've never used - Gimp or Photoshop - for one
photograph.  Neither are easy programs to learn.

You wouldn't select by color, by the way.  You'd make a selection of
the piano, knock out the background (walls) on a layer containing the
selection, have one layer with the piano and a second layer with
everything beneath that, and adjust each layer with Curves or Levels.
Pretty simple for an experienced Photoshop user.

If it's one photograph, you should consider paying someone who is good
with Photoshop to do the post-processing and give you back a .jpg.

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

For free I would look at:

Paint.NET
  http://www.getpaint.net/

PhotoFiltre
  http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm

Cheers,
David

BTW: are you shooting RAW?

David

I'd try HDR using enfuse.

  BugBear

If your camera can produce a RAW image, then this is an easy job for a
RAW converter, and the RAW converter that came with the camera will
probably be the easiest to use for the job. You want to compress the
dynamic range between most of the darkness of the piano and most of
the lightness of the walls. This could be done globally by changing
the luminance translation curve, or locally by using some kind of
local dynamic range optimiser, if the RAW converter offers that.

There are some third party dynamic range converters that will
automatically try to do that for you on that kind of image, and will
often do quite a good job. For example Picasa's RAW converter (free
from Google) does that, and if that doesn't do enough, allows you to
tweak it a bit more with the shadow fill slider.

--
Chris Malcolm

news:0052a56f$0$16912$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...

If you have a tripod, taking two or three different exposures about an
f/stop apart might give you more images to play with and combine.  Yes,
10-bit raw is hardly going to be better than JPEG, if at all, so I
wouldn't waste time with that.

Installing .NET should be straight-forward, just a download - a 2.7MB
starter or a 197MB full version.  Hope you have a fast connection or a
friend with one.  Make sure you install the correct version for Paint.NET.
Enjoy playing with the images.

Cheers,
David

On 2009-11-06 10:13:45 -0800, Peabody <waybackNO746SPA...@yahoo.com> said:

I see a color cast in you example. That is probably related to white
balance. I know others have suggested shooting jpg only, however RAW
will give you the best opportunity to adjust the WB.

It will probably be worth your while to create a custom WB profile for
the lighting in that room.

Anyway, I downloaded your file and tried a couple of fixes, this being
the most satisfying to my eye.

In this case I used CS4 along with the onOne Phototools plug-in set and
applied a few of their filters to make some tweeks.

Here is an A-B comparison with your image on the left;
http://homepage.mac.com/lco/filechute/Comp-A-B.jpg

--
Regards,

Savageduck

I'd say forget all the fancy processing tricks, and
study up on lighting.

You've got one major source of light, and hence have a
fairly deep shadow from it (there is also very clearly a
second source, otherwise the shadow would be absolutely
black, which it isn't).  But the walls are being
illuminated just as much as the piano, simply because
that source of light is far away, and thus the distance to
the walls only slightly farther, percentage wise, than the
distance to the piano.

Use more lights.  With soft light it makes little
difference how far they are from different objects, the
amount of light will be the same.  With harsh point
sources of light that are very close (just out of the
camera's view) the piano can be nearly twice as close to
the light as the wall is.

And focused spotlights would also reduce illumination of
the walls, which along with the above would
significantly reduce the dynamic range of the scene.

It can also make the scene more interesting too, in
terms of tonal variations.  Three or four small spot
lights on the piano, and one or two diffused sources for
fill and background, might make a much more interesting
piano.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)              fl...@apaflo.com

On Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:41:57 -0600, Peabody <waybackNO746SPA...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Photoline has always opened any of the CHDK cameras' RAW files just fine.
With various interpolation algorithm options as well. If you don't use that
advanced editor then use CHDK's in-camera DNG conversion to save your RAW
file data (DNG4PS intermediate computer step no longer required). Then you
can open the files direct from the camera in more rudimentary adobe
products or other editors. 10-bit or 12-bit, depending on camera model.

On Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:32:14 -0600, Peabody <waybackNO746SPA...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

DNG is a standardized RAW format that most editors can open and use.
Photoline's authors use some RAW file format basics, even being able to
open RAW formats that aren't on the market yet. (Surprisingly discovered
when I tested several new RAW formats before there was even an update to
Photoline to support those makes and models of cameras.) There is the more
common Import Digital Camera RAW option in Photoline for standard digital
photography, as well as the Import RAW Image Data option. The latter being
used to open any unconventional RAW file formats that are found only in
obscure digital imaging and science circles. Allowing you to select your
color-space options, bit-patterns (8/16-bit, big/little Endian, etc.), line
overflow lengths, and header-sizes on the RAW Image Data import dialogue.

If using their Import Digital Camera RAW reading feature, just be sure to
set the gamma for Camera RAW files in the setup options to reflect the
gamma of your workspace (for PCs this is typically 2.20.) If your RAW
filename's extension (user selectable in CHDK cameras) is then associated
with Photoline, it will open them up just fine from Explorer by
double-clicking on the RAW file, using the last settings you used in the
Import Digital Camera RAW panel. The Photoline authors are also quick to
update their software to open any new RAW formats that are unique. Rather
than waiting half a year or more, you usually get the latest RAW formats
supported in the next release of Photoline, which can sometimes be several
times a month. E.g. there have been 2 official updates in the last month.
10 official updates this year so far. Many intermediate updates posted more
often depending on importance, often not logged as official version
updates. Check installer filesize, if different it's an update.

Adobe's software does. They'd rather invent their own proprietary
conventions and make everyone dependent on them to wait for an update,
sometimes making their users and supporters pay to do so. Others editing
software authors do not. Though adobe will support all DNG files (available
as a RAW default from all CHDK compatible cameras), DNG is one of the few
things that adobe did somewhat correctly.

See above.

The whole point of DNG is that it's a generic RAW format, so yes, any
DNG should open on any program that supports DNG.

--
    W
  . | ,. w ,   "Some people are alive only because
   \|/  \|/     it is illegal to kill them."    Perna condita delenda est
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