[Crosshair]

Hiya,

Caught a good light and tried to exploit it. Since I am not much into landscape and clouds are very hard to raw-process for me, I meticulously took some long minutes to get this right. Or I think so.

But in the end I got somewhat crazy colors! But I have some way until reaching the optimal, I think.

All yours to criticize. Thanks in advance.

[Crosshair]

No critique?

ok.

[benrotem]

Hmm. The clouds colouring just looks fake.
This is from my POV though, and I prefer more of a direct Straight-out-of-Camera look to a picture, rather than a picture that looks like it was twiddled and adjusted.
I'm not sure this is from an overdose of saturation, or messing around with the color balance. This picture has some real potential in it. Try an edit with the raw file, straight into black and white, with a slight kick of contrast. I feel that would help pull out the beauty in the picture.

[tibbitts]

It might help to post a "less-processed" version for comparison. I'm sure the sky was intentional, but it might look too similar to being accidentally oversaturated.

Paul

[Schraubstock]

Hmm. The clouds colouring just looks fake.
This is from my POV though, and I prefer more of a direct Straight-out-of-Camera look to a picture, rather than a picture that looks like it was twiddled and adjusted.
I'm not sure this is from an overdose of saturation, or messing around with the color balance. This picture has some real potential in it. Try an edit with the raw file, straight into black and white, with a slight kick of contrast. I feel that would help pull out the beauty in the picture.

It might help to post a "less-processed" version for comparison. I'm sure the sky was intentional, but it might look too similar to being accidentally oversaturated.

Paul

Both comments are spot on and I too would like to see an unprocessed version.

Greetings

[Tom Woj]

I agree it looks a little bit fake, mostly due to the colour. Also because of the rays of light comming down from the sky, which may or may not be fake, but because the colour is a bit off they give that impression.

More important to me however, are the blown out highlights on the water. You're losing a lot of detail there, and it makes it look too sharp/pixelated. You shot it at f5.6 1/1000 iso 160 - if you'd stopped down a little so that you kept that highlight detail, and then raised the shadows in post, you'd have much more control.

You can raise the level of shadows far far easier than lowering highlights. Once those highlights go to white, that's it! They're gone.

Nice capture though, and I too would love to see an unprocessed version.

EDIT:

My quick take on it. Converted to black and white, little bit of a blue tint (blue is calming which I thought fit quite well, could have used orange/red to get a warmer feeling), and played around with tone curves/exposure etc in lightroom to get a bit more contrast in the clouds, and really bring those light rays out. Also put a grad filter on the top half of the image to under expose the sky a little. Used a filter on the water and adjusted clarity so it would blur the highlights a little, and then roughly masked out the boat and bumped the exposure on it just a touch. Finished off with a vingette to draw the viewers eye more towards the boat.

Not saying thats how it should be done, definetley not, but just some ideas to get you going. With a high res version of this you could do so much great stuff with it! Even more so if you shot it in RAW.

[Schraubstock]

I agree it looks a little bit fake, mostly due to the colour. Also because of the rays of light comming down from the sky, which may or may not be fake, but because the colour is a bit off they give that impression.

More important to me however, are the blown out highlights on the water. You're losing a lot of detail there, and it makes it look too sharp/pixelated. You shot it at f5.6 1/1000 iso 160 - if you'd stopped down a little so that you kept that highlight detail, and then raised the shadows in post, you'd have much more control.

You can raise the level of shadows far far easier than lowering highlights. Once those highlights go to white, that's it! They're gone.

Nice capture though, and I too would love to see an unprocessed version.

EDIT:

My quick take on it. Converted to black and white, little bit of a blue tint (blue is calming which I thought fit quite well, could have used orange/red to get a warmer feeling), and played around with tone curves/exposure etc in lightroom to get a bit more contrast in the clouds, and really bring those light rays out. Also put a grad filter on the top half of the image to under expose the sky a little. Used a filter on the water and adjusted clarity so it would blur the highlights a little, and then roughly masked out the boat and bumped the exposure on it just a touch. Finished off with a vingette to draw the viewers eye more towards the boat.

Not saying thats how it should be done, definetley not, but just some ideas to get you going. With a high res version of this you could do so much great stuff with it! Even more so if you shot it in RAW.

Hi

Bravo !!
Well done, personally I think the a colour version would be better. But starting afresh from the original is a must. Once an image has been manipulated this much, and to make it even more difficult, if the image is low res JPG it is next to impossible t rescue it. I admire your courage and skill for giving it a go.

I like a challenge, looked at it and gave up. The image has great potential if the original is good. But as they say in the classics: You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Greetings

[Crosshair]

thank you all for good critics. they teach me a lot.

here is a milder processed version. but I must say this is not very punchy to me. so lead me from here.

[emalvick]

A side question... is the original image a raw? what software are you using?

The new image is better in terms of coloring. The detail in the original was nice, but the purple clouds ruined the photo (especially in contrast with the orange sky underneath). Whatever you do, you need a bit more work to bring the detail in the clouds back without the color shift. I asked about what you are using because a raw processor like LR would allow you to selective desaturate the purples, which aren't really factoring into the image elsewhere anyway.

I do like the Black and White version Tom Posted, although I feel it is a bit dark. My feeling there is definitely subjective as the darkness does help make the light rays stand out. It's all a matter of what you want to get out of the image. The great thing about digital is you at least have something to work with here, and it is a good starting point. Getting the types of photos like you posted here "perfect" is quite challenging. I try shooting those sun rays quite often and struggle to meet my goals with them.

[Crosshair]

@emalvick I am using PS CS6, and the shot is RAW.

I would also like to bring the detail out in the clouds and give some contrast to them, because I like it that way. But I find it so difficult with my current skill level. I use Shadows/Highlights and contrast only. I am aware of a Burn Tool but I am simply bad at using brush things. The problem is, when I try to bring out punchy sunset colors I easily render an overprocessed image. @Tom Woj thank you, this BW with a blue filter really gives me an idea. The rays are just more beautiful. But the whole image is a little dark to me I wanted a colorful and a little contrasty image that involves many colors to watch. But not there yet.

And the color transitions in clouds are hard to protect, a little processing and there is noise there, or artifacts pop up similar to the artifacts that occur when you compress the image too much, and lines of colors like in a gif image, and what not.

[emalvick]

If you are using CS6, then my guess is that you are using Camera Raw. You could go through the steps you had in the first post and use the HSL tools/tab (I don't use ACR enough to know where they are at let alone what may have changed in CS6) to adjust the saturation of the purples.

As far as shadows and highlights... You could work with curves. You could work with curves in ACR, but it may be more effective to work in Photoshop on a duplicate layer or perhaps even an adjustment layer. The point would be to use the curves only concerning yourself with the clouds. Once you are done you could use a layer mask so that the remaining picture shows up in the preadjustment state.

For that matter you could do the same thing with an adjustment layer for the levels, again only focusing on the clouds.

The primary need is to take advantage of the layers in photoshop to selectively edit your photo rather than worrying about brushes. I personally struggle with brushes myself. However, when you do need them (which can be the case when creating masks), it is worth cutting down on the flow with the brush so that each use of the brush is very light. It takes more work for the same results, but the results will be more refined, controllable, and less prone to mistakes.