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Removing haze in airborne photos / videos

This is a perpetual problem in all but rare immediate-post-frontal conditions.

I tend to use, in Photoshop CS3, Image / Adjust / Levels and tweak the RGB values individually, bringing the sliders to the start and end of each spectrum.

The automatic function Image / Adjust / Auto Levels works sometimes (does the same thing as the above but aggressively) but usually the result is way too crude.

Has anyone developed an effective way of doing it?

A circular polarising filter seems to help a bit, too.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Most simply haze generally shows up as a lack of contrast, so anything which increases contrast will help. Your Levels tweak does this and you could try the Curves tool for more precise control. The lack of contrast is particularly noticeable in the blue channel, so try increasing the contrast significantly in the Blue channel, again either using Levels or Curves.

A simple technique is to duplicate the background layer and use the Multiply blend mode - the effect will likely be too strong, so slide the opacity of the new layer down to taste.

Another way is to apply an unsharp mask, which has the effect of increasing edge definition. It's quick and simple but a bit crude.

It depends how much you can be bothered, but some photos will have noticeably more haze in some bits than others. Typically they'll be more as you get closer to the horizon because you're looking through more air. If the top is just sky it might not be so noticeable there, but if for example you have more haze in the top than the bottom use an adjustment layer with a gradient mask so the level/curves changes impacts the top more than the bottom.

In this image from your collection:

all these things were present - low contrast in the blue channel, and an extra area of low contrast where you got a reflection on the plexiglass. Using the above techniques but rushing and doing it rather crudely, i.e. curves and an extra selective application of them, I got this result:

!/system/1/assets/files/000/000/178/178/7c7ce4623/original/example.jpg!

The green perhaps looks a bit unnatural because one is so used to the haze, so you could dial the saturation down there a bit if you wanted.

Administrator
EGTR / London, United Kingdom

The green perhaps looks a bit unnatural ...

A tiny little bit overdone maybe - but I like it that way too (just as with the blue sky in the image below).

I usually work with the pictures at raw data level (depending on which camera I use either in Silkypix or Sigma Photo Pro), first adjusting the white balance and then tweaking the gradation curve (usually I bend it downwards a little).

EDDS - Stuttgart

My only suggestions are 1: use a polarising filter (good to leave on all the time to protect the lens) 2: shoot in RAW format to give you the best editing options in Lightroom or Photoshop. I suspect the side windows in my PA28 havent been changed since 1979, and I have only had to make minor contrast / exposure / saturation changes.

use a polarising filter

Depends very much on your windscreen! Our Citation at work has a plastic windscreen that is more than 2 centimetres thick which leads to very "interesting" rainbow colours when using a polariser!

EDDS - Stuttgart

Lovely photo what next by the way. This isnt my best photo but I dont have many published online, but this was taken en-route to Manston, with London appearing in the mist.

I found auto adjust in iPhoto helped many of mine from the Atlantic crossing here. But I never really knew what to adjust manually. The pressurisation doesn't help either given the deformation of the plastic windows.

EGTK Oxford

Some good tips - many thanks.

I am especially amazed how David got rid of that window reflection. Normally I try damn hard to avoid reflections in the first place but on that one pic I didn't, for some reason.

Photoshop's Auto Adjust works for most "ground based" shooting but it often produces very artificial looking results, with obviously un-natural colours. A professional photographer I know tells me that photography is nothing to do with reality but I like to keep mine reasonably natural looking.

And for high altitude airborne pics, Auto Adjust invariably produces a rubbish result (Photoshop CS3 is what I have).

What works for a quick hack is to increase the contrast and then tweak the brightness as required. But that doesn't deal with the strong blue cast.

I will have a play with some old pics...

I shoot in 24-bit jpeg, max quality. I have tried RAW (Pentax K5) but cannot see any difference unless I zoom in onto the smallest details, and the files are massive, and most image utilities cannot display them, or cannot display them correctly.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

If you use iPhoto, go to Edit, then Adjust (top right corner) and you’ll get into a great interface with good control. They key her is to find a combination of Definition – normally slide this one as far as it will go, and then get the Highlights one pretty high as well – it will reduce them and make them look less burned out. Play with contrast a little if you wish, but by now you should be in pretty good shape.

Hi Peter, can you give me one shot in full resolution? I did this professionally for years, for example I made a book called “Above Munich”. worked om the pictures for 6 months ;-)

I use
- Photoshop CS5
- Nikon Capture NX2

and some Photoshop Plugins to remove lens distortion and other stuff.

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