[K McCall]

I'd love to have a go at the RAW - this is just the kind of shot I love doing post on!

[K McCall]

Nevermind, I took a go at the jpg and was pretty happy with what Lightroom was able to pull out.

[Zephos]

Nevermind, I took a go at the jpg and was pretty happy with what Lightroom was able to pull out.

Well, here it is if you or anyone else still wants it. Your rendition looks amazing, btw.

What changes did you make?

http://ec2-54-187-173-50.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/Repo/IMGP5691.DNG

Just click on the above link.

[normhead]

Actually, I like the first image--a lot.

It has that "je ne sais quoi."

[Zephos]

Actually, I like the first image--a lot.

Thank you. Now I only hope to get as good at PP as my K-50 is!

[K McCall]

There are two major differences I made. The first is that I use dodging (making an area lighter) and burning (making an area darker) to bring up specific parts of your photo (which was a fantastic shot to bring with, by the way). Specifically, I dodged the river and the far riverbank as well as very lightly over the whole bottom of the photo. I tend to use large brushes with very little opacity and just paint, paint, paint so that there's no jarring demarcation between dodged areas and non-dodged areas. I also used a graduated filter so that the entire right and bottom became a bit brighter and brought out the highlights.

The second difference is much harder to explain if you don't use Lightroom, but there are several ways that Lightroom lets you fiddle with colors. The various ways you can control them really allows you to make some pop while others recede, and the whole quality of the photo can change. The first of these is White Balance, which I imagine that any image editor can do. Then each color - reds, oranges, yellows, and so on - allow for tweaking to their hue, saturation, and luminance. I find the luminance to each color is key. In your photograph, I believe every single color was altered in some way. Finally, Lightroom allows for what's called "Camera Calibration" which is kind of like how you'd adjust the RBG values on an old tv. The easiest way I can think to explain how this affects the picture is that it changes how the colors interact with each other. I did a lot of adjusting to these values.

There were other tweaks I made, but those two are what really changed the photo. I picked up Lightroom YEARS ago on sale for like $69 right before a new version was announced, and since then I only pay for upgrades. Perhaps you can find a similar deal if you're so inclined!

[Zephos]

There are two major differences I made. The first is that I use dodging (making an area lighter) and burning (making an area darker) to bring up specific parts of your photo (which was a fantastic shot to bring with, by the way). Specifically, I dodged the river and the far riverbank as well as very lightly over the whole bottom of the photo. I tend to use large brushes with very little opacity and just paint, paint, paint so that there's no jarring demarcation between dodged areas and non-dodged areas. I also used a graduated filter so that the entire right and bottom became a bit brighter and brought out the highlights.

The second difference is much harder to explain if you don't use Lightroom, but there are several ways that Lightroom lets you fiddle with colors. The various ways you can control them really allows you to make some pop while others recede, and the whole quality of the photo can change. The first of these is White Balance, which I imagine that any image editor can do. Then each color - reds, oranges, yellows, and so on - allow for tweaking to their hue, saturation, and luminance. I find the luminance to each color is key. In your photograph, I believe every single color was altered in some way. Finally, Lightroom allows for what's called "Camera Calibration" which is kind of like how you'd adjust the RBG values on an old tv. The easiest way I can think to explain how this affects the picture is that it changes how the colors interact with each other. I did a lot of adjusting to these values.

There were other tweaks I made, but those two are what really changed the photo. I picked up Lightroom YEARS ago on sale for like $69 right before a new version was announced, and since then I only pay for upgrades. Perhaps you can find a similar deal if you're so inclined!

Thank you! That was really enlightening and I'm going to see if my software has some of those features. Did you do the dodging/burning in LR?

[K McCall]

Thank you! That was really enlightening and I'm going to see if my software has some of those features. Did you do the dodging/burning in LR?

Everything was done in Lightroom. I use Photoshop like once a year. Otherwise my workflow is 100% Lightroom. It has a "brush" feature where you can choose what the brush does. In this case, I increased exposure a bit, increased highlights, and decreased shadows. As I said before, I used a large brush with very little opacity, so everything I painted with the brush, it slightly increased those values on the places I painted.

[Schraubstock]

Hi

I do not work with any of the programs you mentioned so I can't comment.

Nice image, but a tough one to photograph. By the way, is there a house at the end of the stream ?

I started off by importing your DNG into Adobe Camera RAW where I did the fundamental adjustments (see below) and saved it in TIF format.

Next, I took the image into Oloneo PhotoEngine and tweaked individual colour channels. Finally I returned to Photo Shop and did some localised adjustments with the adjustment brush.

Result: see below.
(caveat: What I see on my monitor may not be the same on yours. As well, on my screen the image is nice and crisp the upload here is not so it does not look as good as it could. As always, the example is only to be seen as an indication of what can be done.)

Cheers

[wildman]

It seemed to have a Romanticist mystical old masters feel to it so that's what I ran with...
I severely reduced contrast among other things.
It's more painterly than photographic so it really doesn't display that well through little 400kb jpg.

[DeepThrob]

Actually, I like the first image--a lot.

Me too... I like the way the center blurs to forever, it's very delicate and easy to destroy. Just a little vignette to steer the eye. (upload is from the jpg - Ya' got to know when to fold 'em)

[photomax7]

As I've only started shooting raw recently I pretty much try anything/everything to tweak my pics...I like your image...here's another treatment.

[K David]

If you have Photoshop, here area couple things worth trying:

1- Copy the layer and change the blending to overlay. Erase the front snow bank and creek with a 100% eraser and the trees on the right side (up to the canopy) and shoreline on the right with a 50% eraser. Set the overlay layer transparency to 50%. Here’s what that looks like:



The idea here is that it adds branch contrast and darkens the sky without altering the colors too much.


2- Copy the layer and change the blending layer to lighter color. Increase the image's brightness and reduce the contrast until you have branch detail in the area over the creek (and the trees to the right, we'll call this, collectively, the central branch detail.) I'd caution against losing the fog too much, though. Once you're happy with the results of that one area, which may require dropping the layer transparency, erase the over-exposed area from the top layer with a large brush at around 55%. This will take three passes to fully erase an area and going in stages will let you blend the perimeter more easily later. After you have the bright areas erased, refine the perimeter with progressively smaller brushes until you've basically erased everything except the central branch detail. Then adjust layer transparency and refine the erased areas more until it looks natural. With that complete, copy the layer you just refined and jack up the contrast as much as possible. Change the transparency to Overlay and run a high-pass filter at 3 to 5 (I used 4), checking the results for taste. Drop the transparency to a point where it looks good (I had the bright layer at 85% and the overlay layer at 15%, and in general find that techniques like this work best when the two layers’ transparencies add up to 100%.) The aim here is to bring out branch detail and contrast, which will be somewhat lost by the previous steps. The transparency reduction should give you nice branch reveal without destroying the fog.

[mag07]

First one is the best. I would maybe give it very light touches here and there but would try to leave the mood and shadow/highlight ratio as it is, cos your exposure seemed spot on to start with. None of the other options presented here do the original image any justice in my humble opinion. Mostly 'overcooked'