Fading Rainbow

[cowmao]

I spotted this rainbow yesterday (too late) and this was my best shot (through a window). I processed to bring out the rainbow without being too heavy-handed. It looks over-processed to me, but you can definitely see the rainbow. Processing is just with DPP: cropped a little; moved the left/right thresholds rather than playing with exposure; and maxed out the RAW and RGB saturation. I also applied the standard Digital Optimizer, but I don't think it really made much difference in this case.

I'm wondering if there's something else I could do?

As an aside, this is the second rainbow we've seen in the past week. The first one was a full rainbow and more vibrant, but I was driving at the time (and didn't have my camera).

50D with 70-200 f/2.8L II IS @ 70mm 1/250" f/11 ISO400

Original (after crop)


Processed

[Richard Lane]

It looks over-processed to me, but you can definitely see the rainbow.

Great capture, it looks awesome!

It does look a little over processed to me too.

All I would do is turn down the settings just a little bit to make it appear more natural and less processed. Less is more!

I would also apply some noise reduction.

P.S. Your Sensor may be a little dirty or I see two small circular spots or a skull face, just above the rainbow on the right side, and to the left of the 2 tree branches.

Great Job and thanks for sharing,
Rich

[conropl]

Great capture, it looks awesome!

It does look a little over processed to me too.

All I would do is turn down the settings just a little bit to make it appear more natural and less processed. Less is more!

I would also apply some noise reduction.

P.S. Your Sensor may be a little dirty or I see two small circular spots or a skull face, just above the rainbow on the right side, and to the left of the 2 tree branches.

Great Job and thanks for sharing,
Rich

I agree with Rich... a little over done for my tastes.

You may want to try shooting these with a polarizer which will get the colors to pop out a lot more. The polarizer does wonders with rainbows and saves on the post processing time/effort.

[cowmao]

Better? I undid the Digital Optimizer (too sharp = noise?). Backed off on the saturation for a more natural look, but it might still be too much?

On the dust, I thought it was the window but it turned out to be a dirty circular polarizer. It doesn't get used much, and it appears I didn't clean it too well the last time. I used the Stamp Tool for the darker spots.

On the polarizer, it does work, because it went from gray skies to visible rainbow. So, I guess it was very faint to start.

Thanks for your input.

[Richard Lane]

Nice job! I personally don't think the revised version is too much, I actually like it the way it is now!

[Stephen Probert]

I think even the second one is over-processed (of course this is somewhat subjective). Rainbows are exciting and make you want to take pictures, but are hard to get very vibrant in-camera. As suggested, a polarizer might help. I think the best thing to do with rainbows is get other interesting subjects in the frame with the rainbow so the rainbow is adding to other elements. Essentially, the Joe McNally rule of "standing in front of more interesting things" will make more interesting pictures. The sillhouetted trees are just not that interesting to me.

As a learning experience, maybe I would try a selectively increasing the saturation of the rainbow (can't remember if DPP does this).