I have a Sony DSC-H55, and I find that the halo around bright white objects is much worse than with my old Kodak Easy Share. I know this is a jpeg effect, but since this is all the camera I am likely to have barring a major lottery win, there is no way for me to shoot in a different format.
So, the question is, do any of the editing suites out there do a good enough job of removing the halo to make them worth the money? I use Paint Shop Pro 8 currently (more frugality on my part) and I haven't been able to find a way to adequately deal with the halo. Very frustrating, as I have a cooperative egret who is willing to let me close enough to get pictures, and I can't get a decent shot no matter what the lighting.
Other than this one thing, I'm not looking to upgrade from PSP8, I don't like to edit my photos much, so it works fine for me.
@dmariewms thanks I will have a closer look tomorrow as I am hitting the hay, but looking at the image it doest seem that bad Nd I would suspect Lightroom wouldn't have much of a problem with it.
You would just wind back the white slider and it should be looking good. Will try tomorrow before I go on assignment/camping for a week.
As to what Brendan said about LR, I can't really add but my two cents is ....LR is free for 30 days from Adobe's website...might be worth a try since this is probably a one time deal as far as subject matter goes!
Although you can do a certain amount of editing to Jpegs. in Lightroom, the amount is pretty limited. It's really aimed more at working on RAW files so I don't think that it's the answer to this problem.
I have however, opened your image, above, in CS5 and according to 'levels' it's correctly exposed, although, visually, it does look a little overdone.
It's possible to regain some colour and contrast using the shadows/highlights tool but the white bird, in this particular copy anyway, is too blown to rescue.
All of which makes me wonder if your camera's settings are causing this 'overly bright' effect. If that's the case, then reducing the brightness at its source, not in editing, should do away with the halo effect you're getting.
If you're not setting the camera up yourself, ie '"PASM," then you might want to try checking your camera's built-in settings.
I'm not familiar with yours but most point and shoots have options like 'landscape, portrait, sport etc., all of which have some bearing, I assume, on the way images turn out when you use them.
For something like this image, I'd go for 'Sport' because it will automatically increase the shutter speed which will help as I doubt that the bird's completely still.
Using other settings do other things. You might find one that suits the situiation better than all of the others.
Another common cause of halos, is oversharpening but I don't think that that's the case here.
I could tell a lot more if I could use a larger version of your image. This one's really too small to be able to do much with.
Hope this helps.
@jester Thanks for your input! It makes sense to me to try the sports mode, and I will also play around with the manual settings some more. I use sports when I'm trying for birds in flight, but never thought of it while they were sitting. I find it very odd about the egrets... I can take pictures of solid white geese in this same park and get no halo. In fact I've gotten the egrets and geese in the same photo, and the egret has a halo and the geese don't.
I had not done any processing at all to the picture before uploading it, so at least in this case it isn't over sharpening.
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the problem you will have if you shooting jpg and the detail is not in the image you wont be able to it back no matter what program.
RAW has greater flexibility in this area as it keeps more information that you can see.
You would just wind back the white slider and it should be looking good. Will try tomorrow before I go on assignment/camping for a week.
I have however, opened your image, above, in CS5 and according to 'levels' it's correctly exposed, although, visually, it does look a little overdone.
It's possible to regain some colour and contrast using the shadows/highlights tool but the white bird, in this particular copy anyway, is too blown to rescue.
All of which makes me wonder if your camera's settings are causing this 'overly bright' effect. If that's the case, then reducing the brightness at its source, not in editing, should do away with the halo effect you're getting.
If you're not setting the camera up yourself, ie '"PASM," then you might want to try checking your camera's built-in settings.
I'm not familiar with yours but most point and shoots have options like 'landscape, portrait, sport etc., all of which have some bearing, I assume, on the way images turn out when you use them.
For something like this image, I'd go for 'Sport' because it will automatically increase the shutter speed which will help as I doubt that the bird's completely still.
Using other settings do other things. You might find one that suits the situiation better than all of the others.
Another common cause of halos, is oversharpening but I don't think that that's the case here.
I could tell a lot more if I could use a larger version of your image. This one's really too small to be able to do much with.
Hope this helps.
Bren.
I had not done any processing at all to the picture before uploading it, so at least in this case it isn't over sharpening.