Did you ever travel on an airplane and wish you could capture a glimpse of the stunning views you get to see? And did you not take your camera because you thought the handprints and scratches on the tiny window would show up in the image? Or did you not even think to use your camera as carry on items.
For most of my air travel trips I never took the camera with me since my previous attempts at capturing the beauty from above was not very rewarding. Thankfully I am quite a determined person when it comes to me trying to accomplish something I want to do. And on my recent trips to the Ohio valley I finally managed to figure out just what to do so I could have great images from 32,000 feet.
As you can see in this pop up window that nothing really obscures the view of these cotton puff cloud formations. But don't think that I captured this image this good right from the start. Of course I captured the image in RAW format so I could have greater control over the data that was recorded. After I downloaded the base image onto my computer I could see that it had quite a bit of glare not only from the strong light source but also the plastic covering on the inside of the window.
Photoshop To The Rescue
In this image of the Ohio river near Cincinnati you can see that a lot of glare sneaked into scene as well as for it being way of from having a level horizon line.
The second image in this pop up window shows the image after I first duplicated the image layer and rotated it to correct the horizon. But of course this ended up making me have to crop a lot of the scene to get it square again.
Some light usage of the rubber stamp tool will allowed me to clone in some lower right corner and upper left corner parts of the scene. After a minimal amount of cloning to get all the corners back to looking as they should I worked on getting some of the haze out of the scene. Although I was able to work on the levels and contrast some to help out, the ideal situation would have been to use a polarizer. You better believe on my next flight that I will bring along a polarizing filter.
Although I could go in and tweak certain areas of the scene to correct color, I can see that a quick overall major improvement has already taken place. As for the fingerprints and scratches on the window, you typically will not even record them if you have the lens as close as you can get to the window pane. IF there are deep scratches or smudges, try to move to another seat with a better window.
Exposure Compensation
The one item that may cause the most havoc in getting great images from an airplane would be any necessary exposure compensation. If you are on the side of the plane facing into the sun, you may have too much light in one area and it will fool the camera into underexposing the scene. But then of course if you set the camera to compensate, you will most likely end up with blown out highlights. The best thing to do if you are facing the sun is to go to the other side of the plane. While you may not have the same cloud formations there, you will on the other hand have optimum lighting.
The image shown in this pop up window is a great example of how great the shadow detail will be in comparison with great highlight details and super saturation if you have the sun to you back or at least not facing the lens.
Of course this image is after some level adjustments to bring things where they should be. In the second image of this window you the image as it was captured and following is the histogram in the levels adjustment window for this image. You an see yet in the fourth image of this window where I adjusted the level settings to be as to achieve a true white point in relation to the actual recorded image and it's actual shadow point.
This process will essentially boost the contrast while not dropping a lot of color shades as when you use the brightness and contrast sliders. Try to stay away from them when at all possible. With careful adjusting you can have greater control of brightness and contrast using the levels sliders instead. After making this adjustment it gives the appearance that the dull haze and glare are removed.
Once you get a good range of zones in the image you can also tweak the color, saturation or even the hue to suit your needs. Be very careful when working out the white point so that you don't loose a lot of fine details that may be in the image. To much of a white point will give the appearance of holes in the image and will be noticeable when printed. Keep the range of shadow zones short so that the contrast is mainly built in the shadows with a full range of light and midtones.
Did you ever travel on an airplane and wish you could capture a glimpse of the stunning views you get to see? And did you not take your camera because you thought the handprints and scratches on the tiny window would show up in the image? Or did you not even think to use your camera as carry on items. 
