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Rainbow in Bridalveil Fall

And other photos from Yosemite National Park February 22-23.

#mountainmonday  +Michael Russell 

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20 thoughts on “Rainbow in Bridalveil Fall”

  1. +Richard Creamer The rock face was perhaps mildly damp on the Friday night when we visited, and also the next morning, but by Saturday night it went completely dry.  At least the rock face still lights up in the shape of the waterfall, with some sunset color!

  2. Thanks everyone!  This image has trees a slight different color than the other Bridalveil Falls – Rainbow shots I uploaded from the same afternoon.  The sky was too light and bright in the RAW files from one of my cameras, and Half Dome wasn't showing up well, so I downloaded Photomatix 4.2 HDR software from HRDsoft.com and gave it a try.  I've used Photomatix in the past, but apparently haven't found a great need for it in the past couple of months, since I didn't have it installed.  I must say though, the new version has some nice features.  

    One version a while back improved its usefulness by showing previews of 8 different processing methods.  Version 4.2 shows 32 different previews, including several black and white.  I tend to use HDR software only when the dynamic range of a shot exceeds my camera's ability to produce a usable single exposure.  Many HDR users have abandoned the intent of the tool (to increase dynamic range… pull out more detail from shadows and eliminate blown highlights).  Instead they use it to make their images look different.  HDRsoft doesn't mind if people buy it for whatever reason, so they're happy to provide new modes.  

    Most of the 32 modes in Photomatix 4.2 aren't of interest to me, but Photographic, Natural, a couple of the black and white modes, and sometimes one or two other modes can produce useful results.  I only need one.  If I can salvage even a fraction of my most difficult exposures, often shot in the most interesting light, that's a huge win!

    The other feature which has improved is the integration with Lightroom.  Lightroom is critical for pre-processing the images, such as setting a good white balance and reducing noise on the darker exposures.  Then from Lightroom you can bring those exposures over to Photomatix, process them as you choose, then the result is imported as a 16-bit TIFF image back into Lightroom, where again you may want to perform a bit of post-processing adjustment.

    I'll take a more detailed look at it over time, but my first impression of Photomatix 4.2 is very favorable.

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