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I took the following photograph yesterday afternoon:



I have done no post processing and I'm generally unhappy with the way it looks. It doesn't seem to have any real impact. The scene looked much better in real life. My main questions is:

Can post processing save the image?

If so, what do people recommend to improve it? If not, what would I need to do differently at the time I took the photograph to improve it?

Hi,

This is my result. If you hate it, pls let me know and I'll take it down.

Cheers

Alex



P.s nice photo

Alex,

That is much better and is pretty close to what I saw (rather than what the camera saw).

What did you do to get to that result?

By the way, I played around with curves on both RGB and Blue and managed to improve the image.

Hi ATJ,

I work mostly in LAB mode in PS so my workflow would be a bit unusual, but I'm sure the same effect can be achieved without leaving RGB mode.

Here is what I did.

1. Converted image to LAB

2. Cropped to taste

3. Adjusted highlights/shadows by going to image--->adjustments-->highlights and shadows

4. Adjusted curves. Specifically, made the lightness channel steeper and made channels a and b steeper. Again will need to be done differently to taste in RGB mode.

5. Made the sky bluer by creating an adjustment layer and applying cooling 82 filtre at density 25 and applying mask to non-sky areas of the photo. I posted this quick technique previously here http://www.dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?t=21984&highlight=fixing+photoshop

6. USM on lightness channel

7. Save

Hope this makes sense. I'm sure there are 1000s of other ways to fix this photo.

Let me know if you need more clarification
Alex

Alex,

I don't have Photoshop CS2, so I couldn't do exactly what you did, however, I was able to do much of the equivalent functions and modified to taste.

I'm much happier with the image now, although yours may still be better.

Looks great, ATJ. Well done! I'd just crop out the bits of tall tree on RHS. Good job.

Alex

Thanks for your help.