[fgates]

I am trying to improve my image processing skills. This picture did not look much in colour (it was a very grey day) but I thought that it had some potential and gave me an opportunity to try and play with the tonal range. Comments and criticism please.

[Summerleft]

I think its got potential but might need something a bit more dramatic as at the moment its difficult to pick out the front tree from anything else

How did you process it?

[fgates]

Thanks Summer. The view was great, but the light was terrible. Its not somewhere that is easy to get to, so I really would like to make something of the picture.

I used Lightzone to convert the RAW file, with a red filter. After that I just did a bit of light cropping. It does look a bit washed out, now that I return to it with fresh eyes. I'll give it another go, I had been tempted to multiply the conversion layer, but thought that that was too contrasty.

Suggestions would be appreciated. I could also post the original.

[Summerleft]

yes pop up the original, do you have photoshop or similar?

[AQ]

While scrolling down this thread I realsied that it could work very well with all the sky cropped off and a bit of contrast added to the resulting picture.

[fgates]

Thanks Summer and AQ. Here is the original.

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted by AQ

While scrolling down this thread I realsied that it could work very well with all the sky cropped off and a bit of contrast added to the resulting picture.

Those were my thoughts exactly, something like this ...



Cropped. Adjusted levels - brought both sliders in slightly (to increase contrast) + moved the midtone slider slightly to the R (to darken). Slight USM @ 50%, radius=0.5 pixels.

[fgates]

Thanks Charlotte. I think that its an improvement. What I had been trying to capture was the way that you could see for miles from the ridge we were standing on. Any ideas on how to capture that sense of distance in 2D? Not necessarily with this shot, but for next time

[Markulous]

Can't say I'm that keen on the B/W which just looks a bit confusing. But Charlotte's crop with those rather subtle colours........ decidely interesting.

Think that you really do need something in the background to give a sense of distance and a nice lead-in towards the mid/backround to emphasise

[fgates]

Thanks for the tip Mark. I wish that I had been able to spend more time there and find a better shot, but we were with friends who had children.