Kauai Helicopter Ride

Kauai Helicopter Ride
Originally uploaded by ngkabra.

This is a picture of the “Grand Canyon of Hawaii” on the island of Kauai. We had spent a week in Kauai a couple of years back. It was great. Note the tiny helicopter in the middle of the picture.

This picture has been touched up using the “normalize” option of the “convert” command from the ImageMagick toolkit. The same effect can be achieved in Photoshop or Gimp using the “Auto” button in the Levels dialog. Comapre with the original picture:

Moral of the story: get great improvements in your pictures by using this very simple technique to adjust the dynamic range of colors. This is especially useful in the case of pictures taken in low light or in very bright light.