rswannabe

Sorry D. I had to step away from this one. I got very dicouraged and frustrated, as it was not turning out how I wanted. I'll pick it back up soon and see if I can get it. 

I guess I'm still not getting it. When I bring in the other sky, I'm still left with those trees to mask. 

How's this?

This is approximately where it was. 

Ok. quick question before I start. I moved the "stream" image down in the original that I posted. Will that still work? Or, try it as is?

Hi D,

This would certainly be the easiest way to go. I do think the sky from the tower is much more dramatic and colorful though. 

Great question. Actually, I don’t care about them at all. But, the way I have the foreground positioned, if I mask off those trees to reveal foreground sky, it’s much more pale and didn’t look good/right. Hi m open to any suggestions. 

Sure. Let me know if this one should be done differently. I'm headed to bed before I get any deeper in it tonight, but I know my next question will be how to mask out the trees for the new, lighter image. 

Brilliant! I'll start on that tomorrow and post once I get it where I think it might work. Thank you!

10 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

I do.

Let me see the two separate images.

Yikes. Ok. Here they are SOOR. 

Hi D,

Wondering if I could get your opinion on what to do with the dark trees in the backgroud. This is a two image composite (not neccessarily going to for realistic here). The sky, tower and dark trees are from one image and the stream, grass and most foreground are another. I don't hate it as is, but plan on printing this, so looking to make it as good as possible. 

Very cool. thank you.

Sounds good. In the process, Datacolor is trying to upsell me to the Spyder 5. Worth the upgrade?

HOLY SHIT!!! I think I finally got it! I contacted Datacolor and they had me reset to factory, which I thought I had already done and a few other things. Anyway, at the end of calibration, it looked much better, but still a bit bright. But, now my brightness is at 30 and it's pretty damn close. Now maybe I can get some motivation to edit again! Thank you for sticking with me. 

As an aside, now that you're back on FB, are general questions prefered there, or here since I'm a premium member?

I’m on it. 

Ha ha. Are we talking “any” screen? I don’t think I know anyone off hand that has a decent non-apple screen. 

They were very, very close to each other  and both darker than screen. 

I did. Only one so far. I’ve downloaded software for a couple others, but navigation is so counterintuitive, I need to spend some time figuring it out. 

Not really sure. About the only thing I can think of is a high powered floor lamp or something. Not real practical for room, but it sounds like I’m out of options. I’m just trying to figure out what changed and why I can’t get it back. 

I'd have to say not really. Or, at leaset it didn't seem like it. 

Of course. I turned all the lights on that are available to me and opened the curtains to all the windows including the ones closest to computer. The window blinds being open didn't make a noticable difference in the appearance of prints. 

Hi D,

Well, the old monitor is not an option. The wife thought it was trashed and got rid of it at the last electronic recylcle event. I've just tried yet another calibration and have a couple questions. I'd rather find out I'm an idiot and doing something wrong, than not be able to fix this.

So, when I choose "Standard Gamut" it always tells me halfway through that it appears to be "Wide Gamut" and do I can't to continue. When I start with  "Wide Gamut" it tells me it appears to be normal gamut. WTF?? The monitor, a Dell U2412M is supposed to be normal gamut. anyway....

When I choos normal, the white point target is 120, but I'm only at 29.9. When I choose wide, the target is 180 and I'm at 30.1. As discussed before, my brightness is all the way to zero. So, during the calibration process when it wants me to bring brightness up to target, I don't. Does this help us at all?

Ok. I'll dig it out and give that a shot, hopefully by tomorrow. Thank you,

I believe I kept my old Samsung that I was using when I first joined all your classes, which led to me buying this Dell. I can dig it up and give it a shot if you think I should. 

Hi D,

I’ve been a little depressed about this whole thing. Open windows didn’t help. I tried another lab and had almost identical results. I guess I can try a couple more labs, but I’m just not sure what else to do.