Landscape post-processing suggestions/help

[freelancer]

Being rather new to photoshop I would appreciate some ideas on post-processing here. What would it take to bring this particular image to the next level? Many thanks.

Original DPP conversion


Approach #1 (like the overall image but the sky had turn "artificial")


Approach #2

[dc2]

This left me completly baffeled what to do .So heres a playing around idea

[ohenry]

I took a simple tonal improvement process. Using layer masks, I selectively brought out the shadows beneath the pier and then selectively darkened the skies. Next, I neutralized the grays with levels and then added an adjustment S curve to give it slight more contrast. Finally, I added a bit of sharpening.



edit: Looking at the posted image, I see some haloing and other compression issues that probably would not have been as dominant if the work had been done on the original rather than an already compressed copy from the web.

another edit: I should have lightened up the flag, too.

[dc2]

Think you you made it really pop think its a neat job Ohenry

[mikej]

Vic, what I would have done was take 2 or even three images of the same picture... one for the sky, one for the shadows and one for the buildings. Then I would have combined them in Photoshop to get a image with proper exposure for all three areas. Your sky looks good in the first one. The corner clouds are blown out in a couple of small areas, but acceptable (you could clone in some detail in those spots if you wanted to). The buildings are pretty close to being properly exposed. A little levels and contrast increase would probably help them. It's the shadow area under the dock and the water that needs a bit of help. But even still, it's not a lot.

Those that are good at doing selective editing to the different areas (I'm not) could several things to improve this. I find it's easier for me to go the multiple exposure route and combine them in Photoshop.

Mike

[freelancer]

ohenry - thank you for the ideas here. Looks very nice.

Mike - when you mentioned combining the different exposures without selective editing, are you refering to stacking the images together or using some digital blending to increase the dynamic range? As the original image was shot entirely in RAW, I have a lot more flexibility here to play around.

dc2 - appreciate your time and inputs here.

[mikej]

Vic, yes, that is what I mean. I shoot almost 100% in raw and have for a long time. I still do exposure stacking to help compensate for the limited exposure range of my digital camera. You probably have about a 5 fstop difference between the shadow and the sky in your picture. That is right at the limit even in raw. It's probably a 7 fstop difference between the clouds and the shadows. Even shooting in raw you will have a hard time recovering info in both areas. It does look like you favored the shadow side in your image, which means you can pull detail out of there, but the blown highlights in the clouds are pretty much gone.

It's in situations like this that I like taking multiple shots and stacking them in Photoshop. Some people do it manually, I use one of Fred Miranda's actions. His action does it a whole lot faster and easier than I can.

Mike

[Michele]

Mike,

Are you saying that you can use an action by FM to combine the images in PS (ones you stack) with each image having a different exposure that you have applied to it

Thanks Michele

[freelancer]

Mike, would you happen to be refering to Fred Miranda's DRI Pro 16-bit Plugin? I am quite interested to hear from your experiences how this would be compared to this approach (which I am using currently)?
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutori...blending.shtml

[mikej]

Yes, I've been using Fred's DMI action for sometime and it does an excellent job. It doesn't do more than 2 images at a time though, which the HDR feature in CS2 will. But if I shoot a shot metered for the highlights and the other shot for the shadows, the action does a good job of intellengently combineing the two images. As I said, much better and faster than I could. I've not used it where I've combined two images and then combined that image with a 3rd image. I don't see why it wouldn't work though.

Vic, yes, I'm familiar with that tutorial on combining images. I used it a few times and finally just went to the action by Fred Miranda. I'm sure there are other ways to do the same thing and some are probably even better than Fred's action, but so far it has worked for me.

Mike