Photo Ninja: Short Tutorial

[Andrea B.]

Basic Conversion Workflow

Duplicate the raw file.

Demosaic

Camera Color Correction Profile (optional)

White Balance

Adjust Tones

Black Point and White Point (WP = Exposure)

Highlights & Shadows

Global Contrast

Adjust Colors or False Colors

Channel mixing or color points or other techniques.

Saturation

Remove Color Noise and/or Luminance Noise

Enhance Details (= Local Contrast) and/or Sharpen (both optional at this point)

Some prefer to detail & sharpen the resized printable or postable version of the photo.

Save as permanent full-size TIF or DNG or other

Resize TIF

Detail or Re-detail

Sharpen or Re-sharpen

Save as TIF and/or post-able JPG

 

 

Photograph as shot and displayed in Photo Mechanic.

Nikon D610 + UV-Nikkor 105/4.5 + BaaderU + SB-140 UV-Flash

f/11 for 20" @ ISO-400 with 3 flashes

 

 

 

Open raw file in Photo Ninja.

Displayed with Demosaic Only.

 

 

 

Camera Color Profile (optional)

 

 

White Balance

White balance can be made by direct application of the white-dropper tool or a white balance preset can be applied.

Using a white balance made against Spectralon or PTFE and saved as Photo Ninja preset is the preferred method.

Apply camera color adjustment profile (not shown).

 

 

 

Temporarily Convert to Black & White

This helps for the initial adjustment of tones and contrast.

 

 

 

Optional Crop

I made an early crop here to avoid adjustments of parts of the photo which would not be used in the final presentation.

 

 

 

Adjust Tones

Choice:  Exposure set to Unadjusted or As Shot.

With reflected UV, I usually like to use Unadjusted and refine the darkness/brightness of the photo myself

because the camera's view in As Shot is often "off" due to the wide dynamic range in some UV photos.

Goal: 

Adjust the histogram white point/brightness (right side) with either the Illumination slider or the Exposure Offset slider.

Adjust the histogram black point/darkness (left side) with the Black slider.

Adjust blown highlights with the Highlight slider.

Note that Photo Ninja makes a preliminary adjustment of highlights which is usually very well done.

Open dark areas with the Shadows slider. It's a really good tool.

 

Tonal adjustment requires an interative process.

Changing one slider can cause the initial adjustment in another slider to need a re-adjustment.

That is true of any converter when making tonal adjustments.

 

See the histo peak on the left side there? That is the dark background in my photo.

I didn't want it to be any darker because then the edges and dark areas of that flower would begin

to lose detail. For this photo there was no adjustment of the Black slider. Also I had used the flash well

enough that I didn't need to lift any dark areas on the flower using the Shadows slider.

That Shadows slider is amazing though. It does a better job of raising dark areas to reveal

detail than most I have used.

 

The bright tones needed some work. The right side of the histogram was at the wall,

so I pulled the overall exposure back by about 1/3 stop. Then I pushed the Illumination slider

to the right to re-brighten the bright tones -- but without blowing them out.

 

The PN Illumination Slider is brilliant. It adjusts bright tones using compression so that brightening

does not ruin contrasts or cause blowouts. It also pulls back blown or bright areas using compression

in such a way that the adjustment does not ruin contrast. The Illumination slider is also very useful

for "opening up" a photo which is overall too dark.

 

The Highlights Slider also adjusts blown channels and attempts to restore the color of the blown channel.

It is one of the best blown channel restorers that I have ever used. That said,I usually do not like to pull back

highlights more than 1-3 clicks on that slider because sometimes you actually do need bits of specular reflection

or very bright pixels to remain in the photo for depth of detail and local contrasts. If more work is needed

on bright tones after the initial adjustment of the Highlights slider, then I switch to the Ilumination slider.

 

Finally, set the Details slider to taste. Try anything from 8-15 as a setting for detail enhancement in the newly

converted, as yet unresized photo. I think that using Details during conversion carries over nicely to later

resized versions of the photograph which can then be sharpened to taste prior to posting online.

 

The Details slider is so well done that you can go to 15 easily without ever seeing any halos. It is always tempting to me

to push the Details slider further than it should go. You don't want to enhance local contrast to the point which

objects in the photo begin to look grainy or artifacty. I cannot achieve the same look that I get from the Details

slider by using a USM setting in other converters.

 

I could write an entire book about the sliders on this Photo Ninja page!

But it is better to learn by doing. "-)

 

 

 

Unclick the Black and White box to return to the color version of the photo.

 

Adjust Colors or False Colors

Then, first revisit the Exposure page to determine whether restoration of the color has revealed

a channel blowout which was not completely pulled back while in Black & White mode or has revealed

some other slight problem with light and dark areas which could benefit from a bit of re-adjustment.

Make interative adjustments as before, as needed.

 

On the Color Enhancement page I usually set Plain/60 as a good default saturation.

I also clicked the yellow box and pushed its saturation up slightly.

 

We don't often get oversaturation in UV false colors, but it might be necessary to slightly desaturate a color

which is hiding some subtle details or tonal shadings because of over-saturation.

 

 

 

Remove Color Noise and/or Luminance Noise

 

 

Enhance Details (= Local Contrast) and/or Sharpen (both optional at this point)

 

 

Save as permanent full-size TIF or DNG (or other)

At this point I save the photo as a tif.

Further changes such as resizing and sharpening or de-noising are done, as needed, in other apps

which permit masking or which have a brush so that changes can be applied locally.

Also note that Photo Ninja does not have a tool for dealing with dust bunny or fluorescent fiber clone-outs.

[colinbm]

Thanks Andrea
Good to see how the pros do it.

[Andrea B.]

Well, Col, I'm  not sure I qualify as a "pro", but thank you!

[dabateman]

I agree with Colin. You are definitely the most experienced photo ninja user I know.

I really need to play around more in PN.

I just typically end up showing stuff as shot, straight out of camera.

[Andrea B.]

I'm wondering if I should write tutorials for other apps?

[Doug A]

Yes! More tutorials, please. You have a knack for making them very easy to follow. Plan to revisit this after the holidays.

 

Thanks for all the work put into this,

Doug A 

[Bill De Jager]

Tutorials are appreciated! Now that I have PhotoNinja again (thanks, Birna!) I want to give color UV a shot.  That's just one kind of post-processing I need to bone up on.

[photoni]

19 hours ago, Andrea B. said:

I'm wondering if I should write tutorials for other apps?

 

I've been using shotoshop for work for about 27 years, but Camera-Raw is too limited for UV and IR,

you have to work on the individual curves R, B and G "by hand" to arrive at a good white balance.

Two years ago I switched to Capture One for tethered acquisition (Z7> Mac ) and to develop Raw
while it's not perfect, it works best for UV and IR.

 

Andrea...
I think Photo Ninja has some good features, but, I was thinking that to have a real comparison between software it would be great to have an original NEF (with a good lens and a good filter) of your tutorial available

[Kristine]

On 11/26/2021 at 5:01 PM, Andrea B. said:

I'm wondering if I should write tutorials for other apps?

If you have the time, it is very much appreciated! I don’t have Photo Ninja, but I’m learning Affinity. The Photo Ninja tutorial you so kindly made is on my to-do list in attempting to adapt it to Affinity, although I’m not sure if it’s fully possible. 

[Andrea B.]

I've been thinking about updating my old copy of Affinity and trying it again. It seemed fairly complex when I first attempted it! 

[Doppler9000]

I would love to see an Affinity tutorial.  I am ready to dump Adobe.  Affinity, with good iPad support, seems a good alternative.