The End of a Perfect Summer’s Day

The hay is now cut and baled in the field next door to me.  It’s been cut for silage the last few years as the idea of getting hay all dried out in the preceding very wet summers was laughable.  This year however, has been different and it’s nice to see the bales of hay sitting in the field waiting for the trailer to come and take them back to the barn..

24mm f/10 1/60 sec. ISO-100

When I was processing this picture, I was having a real struggle with banding.  The processing algorithm looks at a gradient like the one in the picture above and rather than distinguishing between blue, slightly darker blue and slightly darker blue again, it says to itself blue will do until it gets to a not so slightly darker blue and only then will it adjust the shade.

The result is a far from a smooth gradient with bands of colour, spoiling the picture.  It saves on processing time to do it this way but I feel it’s a compromise too far.  I have found the solution though and I’ll be posting an article next week on how to tackle this annoying problem.

July 20, 2013 | Categories: Photography and Travel | 34 Comments