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Originally posted by Dan Rockwell
For some reason they seem to be more sensitive to some of the optical qualities of the chem-haze and trails than some of the more professional cameras.

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Originally posted by Et in Arcadia ego
Maybe cheap lense elements or CCD chips accidentally filter out normally occuring wavelengths that allow the chem to show better.

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Did this camera have any listed lense features like UV or Polarization? If you could find out anything about it it may possibly help us quantify the best approach to take for 'anecdotal' images

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Originally posted by VS
I've always found Image>Adjustments>Equalize to be WAY too heavy handed, and it has no "tweakability" like Levels (histogram) or Curves does.

One method I like to use is stretching each color channel to as far as it will go without clipping in levels, and then applying that only to the luminosity.

If you hold down the alt key when you move the sliders in levels, it will show you what pixels are getting (or already are) clipped for the channel you have selected. Just go through the R, G, and B channels seperatly, pulling the sliders as far toward the center as you can get without clipping. This will end up changing your colors (although sometimes for the better!) so after you apply the levels, go Edit>Fade Levels>Luminosity, and you get to keep the original color. Alternatly, you could select Color under the fade menu, and you would change only the color, not the luminosity.

Example 1: unaltered



Example 2: stretched individual levels



Example 3: stretched individual levels with
luminosty fade



Example 4: stretched individual levels with color fade



/I sorta suck at explaining things

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Originally posted by VS
A very helpful thing when trying to enhance clouds against a blue sky like that is to make a channel mixer adjustment layer. I'm not sure what version of Photoshop you're using, but in CS, at the bottom of the layers window, there is a circle that is diagonally half black that gives you a drop down menu of "adjustment" layers. From that menu, select "Channel Mixer". Now from the channel mixer window, check the "Monochrome" box, and it's just like using color filters with B/W film! Turn up the red source channel to 100% and if that's not enough, turn down the blue source channel a but, but up the green one to compensate, as you generally want all the percentages to add up to 100. Now hit OK.
Above your background, you now have a new layer. Set this new layer's mode to Luminosity from the drop-down menu at the top of the layers window, and you're done!

Another way of bringing out some of the cloud detail is using a high pass filter. It will produce similar results as unsharp-masking.
To do this, duplicate your background layer, and set the duplicate layer's mode to "Overlay".
It will look real funny now, but don't worry, that gets fixed. Now go Filter>Other>High Pass.
From here, play around with the slider, until you get a result you like, hit OK, and adjust the layer's opacity to your liking.

Now a lot of the time a cheap digital camera can have issues with color noise, and the more processing like this you do, the more it becomes obvious (and distracting). So to correct color noise, covert your image from RGB to Lab color by going Image>Mode>Lab Color. Now, Open the channels window, and select Channel A. Apply a gaussian blur to this channel until the graininess blurs away, and don't worry too much about losing fine details. Do the same for Channel B. Now convert your image back to RGB, and you should have reduced the color noise quite a bit, while leaving the luminosity details intact.

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