Taking it too far?

BenA2

The following shot of Haystack Rock on Canon Beach was taken in a series with the intent to use CS2's HDR conversion to display its large dynamic range, principally to bring out the details in the rock. Unfortunately, I blew the composition, but I still thought it was a good image to play with in Photoshop.

Well, for reasons I won't go into, it was no easy task to convert all the RAW files for import to HDR, so I decided just to pick one image and see what I could do with ACR 3.1 and shadow/highlights to bring out the rock detail. I chose to work with one of the underexposed images in favor of avoiding any blown highlights. In retrospect, I could have used one with a bit more exposure, but what's done is done. Anyway, here is the original RAW image as shot:


Fujifilm Finepix s20Pro at IS0 200, 1/800, f/8

Here is the image after ACR 3.1 conversion:


With the above image in Photoshop, I did the following:

1) Noise reduction in Noise Ninja to clean up the rock and its reflection.

2) Crop and rotate.

3) Shadow/Highlights with shadows set to 93/30/79 and midtone contrast +19.

4) Convert to CMYK.

5) Aggressive sharpening of the black channel to increase detail.

4) Luminance curve to improve overall contrast.

5) Steepened black curve by dragging the dark end to the left.

6) Brought down the magenta curve a bit to accentuate the greens in the rock.

7) Resize to 4×6 print size at 302 ppi.

8) Convert to LAB for sharpening.

9) USM (500/1.5/30) on duplicate background layer and used separate dark and light hallow layers (basically Rutt's advanced method) to adjust intensity.

After all that, here's the final image:



After all that, my question is: have I taken it too far? Or is this a pleasing, realistic-looking image (composition and boring sky aside)? When I was finished with it, I was pretty prowd of myself. But, now, sometimes I look at it and feel it's now a little flat and inneffective. I'd love to get your opinions.

Thanks,
Ben

cletus

Hey ben,

I think it looks good!

It may seem a bit flat, but I think that's due to the light you had to deal with. A bright overcast sky is going to tend to flatten everything out. You've got some good dark details in there, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Nice work

BenA2

Thanks

cletus wrote:

Hey ben,

I think it looks good!

It may seem a bit flat, but I think that's due to the light you had to deal with. A bright overcast sky is going to tend to flatten everything out. You've got some good dark details in there, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Nice work

Thanks, Eric. I appreciate that.

-Ben

lynnma

Nice ps job Ben.. quite a lot to do!! Good result. Gonna have to print that lot out

ginger_55

uh, well, good ps, ben. really. i do like the original sky, so ominous. can you play some more?

:hide

me, not me, I mean, an imposter..........

Identity theft, that is it, identity theft, here.

BenA2

Thanks Lynn!

lynnma wrote:

Nice ps job Ben.. quite a lot to do!! Good result. Gonna have to print that lot out

Thanks Lynn!

BenA2

Thanks

ginger_55 wrote:

uh, well, good ps, ben. really. i do like the original sky, so ominous. can you play some more?

I appreciate the compliment Ginger.

Actually, since I wasn't going for a "great shot" here--just looking to see what kind of detail I could get out of an underexposed shot--I didn't want to focus too much on the sky. Actually, I've reproduced the sky very true to the actual scene. It looked more ominous in the original shot because of the under exposure.

I try to avoid using masks in my PS work, which is what would have been required to keep so much contrast in the sky. I played with the sky a little bit with curves. But without a mask, everything I did to add some pop to the sky tended to flatten the water and beach.

Thanks,
Ben