Originally posted by todd Glenn5995 - Points right off the bat to you as the first person the correct the horizon line. Wasn't surprised to love your version. You have a trademark style that is always a treat. Glowing highlights, perfect color balance, lovely enticement of the pastel colors and golden tones in the foreground... At first I questioned the removal of the lines in the right foreground rock, but then you convinced me because there is an overall simplicity to your version that the lines would have drawn too much attention to themselves. Perfect touches to the contrast and detail... Your treatment of the sky is amazing and accurate to the way I remember it that morning. Very tasteful, fitting, and effective crop too. It would be wonderful if you could share a little bit about your editing steps.
Well here we go...
Off to Lightroom where:
1) I applied the lens profile correction (note: the screen shot has the cropped image, this is for the information only)
2) Following adjustments:
3) Next export to Photomatix to process as a HDR. I wanted to keep it mild so that it did not have an "HDR" look to it, but wanted a little more dynamic range so it was not quite as flat.
4) Back to Lightroom for cropping and leveling the horizon (again this screen shot is after the fact for info, so there is additional processing evident)
Todd, I liked your composition, but the prolonged exposure, which gave the water the nice, misty and foggy look also allowed motion blur of the palm fronds. I knew that getting them to look good would be difficult and in all honesty I felt even with alot of effort I would not be happy with them, so I decided to crop the left side to remove the palm tree. That left a lot of sky, which I didn't think added too much. I wanted it to support the subject which was going to be the rocks and the beach. I selected a 16 X 9 aspect ratio crop and applied the rule of thirds and placed the horizon at the upper third and placed the rocks in the left two-thirds. This allowed the rocks to occupy the left two-thirds and the lower two-thirds of the image.
5) The following adjustments (again - you are seeing the final image, I am just showing the settings)
6) Clean it up a little. I believed the white lines on the rock to be bird droppings, but whatever they were, they were distracting. I also cloned some of the disturbances and debris on the sand to give it a smoother and cleaner look.
7) I then used the graduated filter to add some blue to the sky and green to the water, but not to the rest of the image.
8) Used the brush tool to soften the sky.
9) Used the brush tool to desaturate around the rocks to remove green from the water from the graduated filter.
10) Used the brush tool to select the beach and rocks to lighten and sharpen.
11) Export to SMugMug where I used PicMonkey to add the frame. I wanted to add a frame to control the border color and contrast. If viewed on a white background the light colors, on the right side in particular, disappeared into the back ground. With the grey border and shadow, it defined the edges nicely (IMHO).
Right or wrong, that is how I did it. I hope it makes sense.
I must now find an image for the next challenge.