[morlandroger]

Taken on Sunday 11th
HDR because of huge contrast between shade and sky. Still brought in another sky though. Adjusted and sharpened in CS2.
Thanks for looking.
C and C welcome.
Roger

[Larne]

Very nice shot, and definitely one that benefits from HDR.

I don't think I would have noticed the sky as being out of ordinary if you hadn't mentioned it. Now that I know of course it totally bugs me every time. Impressive job on blending it in without losing the detail in those overhanding leaves.

[marcinklysewicz]

wow - that is nice . lovely scennery - better then bluebells from some forest. and your HDR processing is good, not too obvious . bravo

[chrisa]

Yes well done on the HDR and sky work. Would not of realised had it not been for your comments.

Scene is well composed and looks good. Maybe more DOF ?

[Larne]

I like the lack of DOF - it gives a kind of ethereal feel to the gravestones in the background. Very fitting for a scene in a graveyard.

[Rob Barron]

I think the HDR has worked ok here and the composition is lovely. Not sure if it needed a new sky or not, haven't seen the original, but with the overhanging leaves and branches filling that area in, I'd have thought it was ok. I would have left it alone simply because of the diffculty of removing a sky like that without taking out fine twigs at the ends of branches. What we are seeing here is a classic example where, despite havng done a very good job, we still have quite a few leaves 'floating' where the twigs connecting them to the trees have been deleted with the previous sky.

Just a little suggestion for you, forgive me if I am just teaching you to suck eggs...

To remove the sky more easily, try duplicating the layer a couple of times, changing the top two layers' blending modes to Multiply. This will make the darks darker and firm up the twigs so that you can select the sky much more easily without deleting the twigs as well. Just select the sky on this layer and then highlight the original layer and hit delete. Delete the top two layers as they are no longer needed and that's it

Hope it helps but still a very critable pic here so well done.

Cheers,
Rob

[morlandroger]

Thanks all.
Will try that Rob. I am a newbie really at this and all advice much welcome. The sky in the original was very very bright haze and totally featureless. It also had haloes around the stones despite all efforts to reduce them. The sky is from another shot taken about the same time of day with the sun on FG but cloud in BG. Looked at a clear blue but decided it would detract from bluebells. Used magic wand to select old sky and haloes then feathered and cut selected area. Placed this onto another layer with new sky.
Most of sharpening is of FG stone stone and FG bluebells(less than stone). I wanted to keep some of the haze feeling deliberately.
Roger

[AQ]

At the end you can always clone out the odd "floating leaf" if you have any

[Rob Barron]

It's the feathering that usually takes out the twigs so it is often better to take out the bulk of the sky with a single pixel of feathering but then the intricate areas with lots of small leaves best to either use no feathering or 0.5 pixels which is possible.

You can do what Anth said and just erase the floating leaves but that depends how many there are. I like those leaves in that position, framing the picture very nicely so wouldn't want to lose too much.

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

This is lovely, Roger Not much to add to what's already been said, except it's maybe a bit on the bright side; toning down the brightness a tad might also bring out even more colour in the bluebells. A lovely picture + great composition, well done

[morlandroger]

Non HDR from RAW file. No sky change but localised sharpening and levels. Prefer my first try.

[AQ]

Agreee with you 100%. I like the first much more

[Markulous]

Have to disagree - much prefer the non-HDR shot. The light and shadow all make sense whereas the HDR has bright patches that don't tie in with the cloudy sky - but that's just my take on it!

[Larne]

Much prefer the HDR version myself. I find that as someone accustomed to looking at photographs for many years I often find that HDR images look 'wrong' but I think as much as anything that is because I have trained myself to look at images in a particular way - a way that is no longer applicable (or not as applicable) in the world of digital imagery.

I guess I'm not as dead-set against HDR as I thought I was

[M1ke A]

Definitely prefer the HDR tweaked version. These hazy white skys on the bright sunny days we've recently had are horrible to shoot in my opinion so pasting a 'different' one in has added to this shot.