Another from my recent trip to Colorado. This was taken in the Crested Butte area about 90 minutes after the sunrise. It was an extremely difficult photo to edit because the light is so varied and the colors so over the top. The original is extremely garish. I did a lot of spot toning down of saturation and brightness and tried to deal with extreme blue color cast in the shadows. It’s toned down but I’m afraid it doesn’t look very natural at this point. What do you think?
Hi Tony. I really like your composition moving from the tree trunks to the 3 different layers of leaves and color. To my eye the top layer feels a little compacted and if you have more image I would try to make that layer similar to the other two leaf layers. You have a lot of trunk on the bottom and you could also try just moving the whole image up a little.
The bright sun on the naturally saturated Colorado leaves is challenging but you did a good job balancing your colors.
Looks like a layer cake of color! Very interesting image, but it looks really challenging to edit. It seems dark to me, but I know that’s a lot of people’s taste these days. The pines on the top third & aspen trunks have a cyan/blue cast. Sometimes I will either 1) lighten the image dramatically or 2) boost the vibrance ridiculously high. Both these techniques have revealed color casts that were difficult to pin down at unadulterated levels. I hope you don’t mind, but it was such a nice image I tried a few things to see what you think…
Wonderful scene, worth some tweaking. The OP seems a little underexposed, which @Kevin_Sink has addressed but I think his version has gone a little too light and some colors have washed out. I’d go back to the raw file and look at different profiles to start with – I suspect the software has tried to help the drama too much. (Were you using a Landscape profile? That could be too much for this gorgeous light. This shouldn’t start out garish.) Neutralizing the blue trunks more (I wouldn’t go all the way) with the Temp slider will make the yellows very saturated, but then I’d go to the HSL sliders and work on the hue/sat of yellows, and the other colors. Maybe bring out a little more contrast in the upper third? Have a look at the Highlights and Shadows sliders, too.
Thank you so much for the suggestion Diane. My original version started out in Camera Landscape, which indeed compounded the problem of intense dynamic range and over saturation. I tried again, using a different shot which was taken just a couple of minutes apart and seemed slightly less problematic. Using your suggested technique, I open in in “Neutral” and first darkened the over exposed areas and then dealt with the saturation. I ended up with a very pale undersaturated version which I could then darken and increase saturation. Here is the result:
This is a much better starting point for going into PS. In a raw processor you have a lot of leeway to darken or lighten things (in complex ways) but once you are in PS the cement has cured on the tonalities and recovery of detail in darks and lights is limited in quality. That includes reducing saturation. You can darken things and increase contrast a lot, but lightening and reducing contrast is limited.
Looking at the histogram (with the image converted to my working space) I think tonalities could now be stretched a bit, darkening darks and lightening lights, judiciously and certainly to taste. With the wonderful complexity here, this may be a great image to isolate certain tonal values with the TK range masks or other sophisticated methods.
I think those aspen trunks are delightful! Did you do any closer shots of just the aspens?
Hey Tony, I’m just gonna stick with the composition side of this and let you know that you absolutely crush this. I love the trees in the layers of the mountain ridges and everything about it in terms of composition I wouldn’t change a thing my friend.
This is a gorgeous autumn landcape from CO to be sure! I love the strong base of the glorious aspen grove, then followed by the layers of colors above. Very beautifully framed.
The main thing that the others have commented on is the processing. I think you are getting on the right track with the 2nd version - which btw is also beautiful! The greens are much more natural in this one, not so much cyan.
For the original, just a little high in contrast, sat and also the shadow areas a bit blue. I tried to mitiage all those, also in ACR and then a bit more in PS with a reduction in overall sat, but a boost in vibrance.
Not sure if this is better, but for sure this image is worth tweaking!
