Back Again… Icons are sometimes Icons because every time you come away, you have something good… but always always different from the last visit.
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Hi Drew,
An interesting scene and I like the position of the sun-star for this composition. I wish that more of the arch was visible, just my opinion. There’s a halo along the top edge of the arch which might be a sharpening artifact. Other than that, well done…Jim
Well done in regards to DOF/focus stacking(?), and exposure blending. It’s colorful, bright, and a spectacular scene. I do agree with @Jim_Zablotny about including the entire arch. My only comment is in regards to sharpness. This is a matter of taste I personally like your foreground and the mid ground has some strong sharpness (to my eye) as well. For what its worth, some “experts” recommend backing off sharpness in the distance where it would be natural to have atmospheric haze impairing the clarity of a scene. Yes, there’s a halo that should be easy to fix using a clone stamp tool set to “Darker” and sampling from the neighboring sky.
Drew, this is a fine looking view with a great sunstar. The details in the lowlands add well to the sense of depth. Each weekly challenge ends on Saturday at 11:59 pm Eastern time, so you missed that window with this fine scene.
As I have never done it before… I am sure to learn more “rules” as time goes on.
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Jim,
I literally had the first version of Photoshop… And kept up on it using it regularly until the 7th version when they started coming out with suites. I kept buying them back at that time but did not use photoshop much. Mostly was using inDesign at that point and resizing pictures or whatever. But, I never really learned layers and the darken/lighten/mean/average stuff for me is all new. I am trying to learn. This shot is about two years old. I have actually been back to Mesa Arch since I shot it… and I am sure the halo is a sharpening artifact. I would like to believe I would have eliminated that issue by not sharpening so much at this point two years down the road. However… I am very interested in learning your suggested fix. Is there a good YouTube video demonstrating it?
I’ve learned that there are scads of ways to repair halos. They aren’t always due to sharpening artifacts, but can be due to aggressive editing techniques (of the sky and/or the horizon region), or to exposure blending, sky composites, etc. A common tool that’s relatively easy to use is the clone/stamp tool. Nick Page gives a nice tutorial on its use. Hope you find it helpful!
If you have the time and are willing to pay for it, Sean Bagshaw’s tutorials are quite exceptional. He’s a gifted teacher - I guess was a teacher prior to photography. His techniques are advanced and use a tool called Luminosity Masks, but the power of these tools is really quite extraordinary.
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Drew, I just say your further response and thought I’d chime in. I’ve explored halo’s in my own shots a bit and found that they appear worst at dark/bright edges and that they show up using the clarity slider in Lightroom (or Photoshop). You can get the same effect doing what’s called “micro contrast” enhancement, which is using an unsharp mask with a large (greater than 10) radius and a small (a few percent) amount.
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I bought Nicks’ luminosity masking course… Started it and got lost. I have TK actions, Well, I have all of the Luminosity panels. I really just need to sit down with someone for a while.
Well, you know what? Your shot is pretty spectacular without all the fancy bells and whistles. Don’t feel rushed about learning. It’s supposed to be fun and the learning is supposed to be fun too. If you just focus on one skill at a time (for example, fixing the halo here), you’ll be able to work on other things as you have time/ability to do so.
Again, if money’s no object, there are some teachers that can “Skype” teach you lessons as well, so you can experience the learning as if the expert is right there with you. Thanks again for sharing such a beautiful image!
Money is always an object… but Maybe I can get Eric Bennett to trade some printing (he lives locally) and or hire him to help me figure out one of these panels. Been thinking about it.
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