Help with this image.

oldoval · January 21, 2012

This image is not especially sharp (handheld,squating), but I'm quite fond of it regardless because of the light that day. The question is...is it too dark? The histogram suggests it may be underexposed but when I bring up the exposure it seems to lose some of the light quality...starts to flaten out.

What say you?

PappyRoot · January 21, 2012

I love it too. I can see why you like it so much. Wonderful shot. I am a noob so I will not be able to answer your guestions. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy it. Where is it at?

Darryl

oldoval wrote: »

This image is not especially sharp (handheld,squating), but I'm quite fond of it regardless because of the light that day. The question is...is it too dark? The histogram suggests it may be underexposed but when I bring up the exposure it seems to lose some of the light quality...starts to flaten out.

What say you?

oldoval · January 21, 2012

Darryl, thank you. This is above La Verkin Utah looking west.

austinjames · January 21, 2012

in my opinion it looks great, light and tones add mood. Think something would be lost if you brightened it up much more...colors would become washed out

NeilL · January 21, 2012

Yeah it's appealing certainly, but not as exciting as it could be, perhaps. If you care to use Ps (there are parallels in Lr etc, and plug in filter options) I would suggest doing a white point adjustment on the clouds only to get brighter whites, and then blending those resulting highlights in a copy of the background, and again blend in another copy of the background layer in Multiply mode, brushing in mid and low tones in sky, to taste, opacity to taste, once again on sky only. In the rest (not sky), you won't lose by lifting midtones exposure and boosting midtone contrast (is the middle of the h'gram comparatively flat?). Sharpen same with USM ~190/0.7/3 in Normal or Luminosity blend mode (experiment). Lift saturation slightly overall. Do everything on the lesser side of moderate, and go more heavy handed if you see the image is going in the right direction and can take it.

Neil

oldoval · January 22, 2012

Neil. I only use LR so a lot of your advise/directions may be lost on me. I've never done any type of layering, blending, etc. The histogram is bunched up toward the left mostly.

Crokey · January 22, 2012

Would even something as simple as lifting the tone curve at the edge of the midtones but pegging it down in the shadows work?An S-curve but without darkening the shadows. This will brighten the sky too much for this, so maybe drop an ND grad over it in lightroom. Alternatively,(or additionally)you could just pull the exposure over to the left, or the brightness slider which seems to effect the midtones less aggressively than exposure.Then play with recovery and an ND, or brushes to return the sky to a more subtle luminosity. It's also possible that you could sacrifice the warm light a bit and go for a slightly, very slightly, cooler color which should show more contrast between the warm highlights and the cooler, blue shadows in the foreground.I forgot to actually mention the composition which is very attractive, it's the kind of place I would love to sit on a rock for 15 min and take a break during a hike.

knapph · January 22, 2012

I worked on a copy of your photo using HSL in LR. Hope you do not mind my making a copy. Using the targeted adjustment tool I increased the luminance of the grasses in front. This increased the luminance of orange and yellow. Next I targeted the clouds and decreased their luminance. I thought I should decrease the luminance of the cliffs. To do this I decreased the red luminance. If I had not been able to decrease the luminance of the cliffs with red, I would have brushed the cliffs to take down their brightness so that the viewer's eye would first go to the brighter grasses. After these moves you could also do some work on the curve a bit. I'm working on my laptop so the luminance moves may be too much or too little for your tastes.

Hope you can see these changes in these copies.

kdog · January 22, 2012

I like what Knapp did, but the foreground is too bright. I would reprocess this with a negative brightness or exposure gradient from the bottom to the top.

knapph · January 22, 2012

I agree with you after seeing the photos on a calibrated monitor and not on my laptop. The foreground is too bright. A bit less luminance with the HSL sliders would be in order.

oldoval · January 22, 2012

Last night I played around with it a little more and did something similar to what Crockey suggested. I burned the sky a bit to bring out more color and detail while dodgeing the highlights in the sky to bring back some of the whites like Neil suggested. I brought up the lumunance of the grass in the foreground too, though not as much Knapph did.

I really need to practice more with tone curves as it seems there is a lot to be gained there.

Thank you for the help so far everyone....feel free to play with it as much as you like, I enjoy the lessons.

anwmn1 · January 22, 2012

oldoval wrote: »

This image is not especially sharp (handheld,squating), but I'm quite fond of it regardless because of the light that day. The question is...is it too dark? The histogram suggests it may be underexposed but when I bring up the exposure it seems to lose some of the light quality...starts to flaten out.

What say you?

I don't use Lightroom but I believe everything I did you can do in Lightroom.

Brighten Midtones- Added a Linear Curve
Increase saturation on Yellow, Blue, and Red
A little more contrast adjustments with Black-Mid-and White points
A little sharpening

oldoval · January 22, 2012

That has some snap to it Aaron, I like it. I guess I'm still a bit timid about going very far in any direction in my processing yet. Still learning.

DigiScapes · January 22, 2012

oldoval wrote: »

This image is not especially sharp (handheld,squating), but I'm quite fond of it regardless because of the light that day. The question is...is it too dark? The histogram suggests it may be underexposed but when I bring up the exposure it seems to lose some of the light quality...starts to flaten out.

What say you?

Beautiful picture! Not knowing what the landscape was like originally, I don't see anything that would tell me that is underexposed. Personally I like the look of images that are slightly underexposed. The colors are much more rich IMO.

anwmn1 · January 22, 2012

oldoval wrote: »

That has some snap to it Aaron, I like it. I guess I'm still a bit timid about going very far in any direction in my processing yet. Still learning.

As long as you save an untouched file you can't go to far with editing. Just delete it if it is bad.

masterofone · January 22, 2012

A little exposure, some color, pulled some noise out of the clouds, and a bit of sharpening.

PappyRoot · January 23, 2012

You guys did a wonderful job with the images. I enjoyed the original then came back and I can see how just a simple tweek here and there can make a huge difference. Thank you for showing this noob all about post editing.

Darryl

squirl033 · January 25, 2012

the original does seem just a bit flat and underexposed. with all the edits posted, i've a bit lost track, but i think i like Oldoval's edit best.

Help with this image.

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