Upside down graduated filter in LR

Graduated filters are a classic tool in photography - be it for taming a big dynamic range or adding a cheesy tint to a sunset sky. They've made their way into software as well - Picasa had a feature to simulate them for a very long time and I showed one possible usage here. Lightroom has them since version 2 (and in a much more versatile way than Picasa - you can adjust exposure, brightness, contrast, clarity, saturation, sharpness and tone the whole thing - wow! the only thing missing for me is to have a spline instead of a straight line as a border for the effect).

Graduated filters have become a tool that I regularly use - very often in the very classic way to bring down a too bright sky, which makes especially sense when you're shooting raw because you have a lot more headroom in the highlights (and again especially with the S5pro and it's remarkable dynamic range, of course;-).

However, there is one interesting "new" use of graduated filters, and that is using it upside down - adding the filter to not bring down the highlights, but lift the shadows.

About 10 days ago on my way to work I stopped at one of Burghausen's vista points opposite of the famous castle to capture this scene:


"Castle Morning" (FinePix S5Pro, 1/230s @ ISO 100; f/11, 80 mm DX, handheld)

It was particularly beautiful how the details below the main castle (which is at the left side of the frame), namely the Pulverturm (gunpowder tower) appeared as schemes in the early morning fog of that December day - but in the original photo above, not much of it is visible... and here's what it looks like after applying a graduated filter in Lightroom to bring up the shadows by 0.80EV:


"Castle" (FinePix S5Pro, 1/230s @ ISO 100; f/11, 80 mm DX, handheld)

That's much more like what I was actually seeing (and yes, I toned the sky a little bit with Split Toning in LR instead of adjusting the white balance). The details in the shadows are a bit noisy of course (more so in this web version, the original has none of those artifacts), but since this particular scene is more about these structures in the fog, to just give a little hint that they are there, and not so much about their details, it's not much of a problem.

Now wait... why didn't I use the Fill Light feature instead? Because of the sharp transition of the dark tree silhouettes at the edge of the rim in front of the morning sky. Using Fill Light, I would have lifted up the brightness of these tree silhouettes too, which introduces sometimes more, sometimes less visible halo-like artifacts that reduce clarity and sharpness. In this scene, a rather unwanted effect.

PS: once more, for this scene with the shadows being lifted just so much that the detail becomes somewhat visible, a properly calibrated display is an absolutely must. If you're serious about your post processing - calibrate!