After Image:
Before:
Fuji Film X T30 camera. XC 15-45mm kit lens
How can I do better post processing
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
This is a single exposure. Highlights and shadows done in Lightroom and everything else in Photoshop
Amazing difference. I think you’ve done an excellent processing job, particularly in the sky. One small comment would be that there are highlights in the tree at the bottom that look like Christmas lights. Easy to fix.
Shawn, the differences are quite dramatic, with your “final” result looking very good. Like Igor, I notice the blooms in the trees at the bottom, which may be a bit too bright. I also notice the hard line along the middle horizon where the bright/dark transition is biggest and there’s a touch of unreality in bright greens in the near trees and the hazy blues in the distance. I’m thinking that using the Dehaze slider in Lightroom would improve the transition from foreground trees to distant mountains and the using luminosity masks for dodging and burning could remove the hard line along the sky. If you’re not familiar with luminosity masks, Tony Kuyper’s web site has a good discussion, here. The other idea is that this view is a prime candidate for taking two exposures, the one that you did, and one with one stop over exposure to get more detail in the land. Then you can load both into Photoshop as layers and make a composite using masking. Again, doing the masking using luminosity masks is the way to go.
