The light is less directional than I would like, but the color is all but overwhelming. This is not over-saturated processing (IMHO.) The vista was this starkly colorful. I had to do the capture with these conditions. The cloulds/rain had been coming and going and I had no reason to think conditions might improve.
Specific Feedback Requested
Because of the compositing mentioned below, this file is larger than 500MB. The masked lightroom sharpening did not seem adequate, so I took the file into Topaz Sharpening AI. This seemed to do the trick, but it considerably inflated the file size. Do you think the image is over sharpened? Do you feel it is overly saturated? The vista is grand, but the composition is somehat weak. Time was limited and I had to take what I could get.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: Yes
This is a 15 frame HDR panorama, courtesy of Lightroom. (I’d forgotten you could do this in LR.) 1/20th of a second at f/9, 46mm focal length shot vertically on a leveled tripod head. ISO 64.
That’s a tour-de-force and a lovely view but it feels overdone to me. LR returned a DNG and I think the highlights in the clouds could profit from more tonal detail, which should be in the DNG file. The sky feels over-saturated, and its color can be isolated by just by working with blues and cyans. The foliage feels a bit too warm, too – the green trees have a yellow cast.
Processing is very subjective (especially color and saturation), but you asked for input and here is my opinion. I don’t think the sharpening is overdone. But the processing is overdone in my opinion. The yellows are too electric for my taste . You have pushed the yellow saturation far enough that you have some clipping in the red channel. Another tell-tale sign of oversaturation is when blue skies get too dark, in real life blue skies don’t look like this, even when polarized. I also agree with @Diane_Miller that the image is too warm. If your greens were more green and not so yellow, it would enhance color contrast by achieving better color separation…
Here is a screenshot showing the red channel, with all that data pushed to the right, the red channel is being clipped.
I’ll go out on a limb and offer a comment. I am not a traditional landscape photographer or a “purist”.
The blue sky is a little overdone, but it also looks like a normal polarized shot. My first reaction was to be impressed because I usually forget to adjust the polarizer across the pano sequence and my shots have more variation in the sky. Rather than worry about the intensity of the blue my tendency would be to remove the contrail.
As someone who lives here in Colorado I disagree with the aspen being oversaturated and poorly color balanced. This is exactly what I expect to see at peak color. At least, this is what people would remember seeing. Both the green aspens and the evergreens are more yellow than green this time of year. I do think the tundra and cinnamon mountains are over done. Pleasing and interesting, but it draws too much attention into the background.
My only real complaint is I am looking for a subject. Yes, the “whole thing” is beautiful but I don’t know what you really want me to look at. I love the variety of colors of the aspen in the front left, but it doesn’t hold me. I wander off.
Printed big and on a wall this would get a lot of interest. I would love to be there.
This turned out nice Mark! With a few tweaks, it will be fantastic. I would agree that it is too warm and I think that is the biggest problem. The tint is off a bit as well, too much magenta.
Here’s generally what I would aim for. The blues in the sky were a bit too hard to correct in a jpeg, so you’ll have to play with that in the raw file.
Here are the main adjustments I made in Photoshop with a Color Balance adjustment layer. You can do something similar in Lightroom with Temp/Tint, except for the Cyan/Red slider, don’t have that option.
I also brought up the lightness in Blues using a Hue/Saturation layer. Finally, I selected the most saturated colors using the TK Panel and brought down their saturation a touch.
The clouds are still pretty much pure white so I would try pulling down the highlights in only the sky as well, then you’ll be on your way…
Also, I don’t recall if we talked about this, but do you have your monitor calibrated? That would explain the divergence since most monitors are much too cool.
I think @David_Kingham nailed it on the colors, and made a good point about the variation in monitors. I would reduce cyan in the sky a bit more and bring up more detail in the clouds. I think that would create more of a connection between the distant land and the clouds.
For me, there is enough of a center of interest in the evergreens surrounded by color, with a sight line leading to the distance.
I like all of the changes that were made by @David_Kingham . His color balance shifts to adjust the greens creates some nice color separation between yellow and green. The yellow aspens look even better when they contrast against the cooler greens of the spruces in Davids rework.
Here is the final version. This is all but an exact duplication of what David did. I burnt in the clouds a bit more, added a hue/saturation layer, and likewise with a brightness/contrast layer. Lastly I added a touch of dehaze at the top of the frame and a tiny vignette. I am quite pleased with this, tho I still don’t think I have the blue sky quite right.
The difference between this and the original post is striking. I am surprised that I couldn’t/didn’t see how baised towards yellow that version was. Possibly this is due largely to 80% of my previous processing has been for B&W. Color work is rather new to me. The monitor, however, is recently calibrated with Spyder5 Pro.
Everyone’s input has been quite beneficial and it is appreciated. Diane, boy, you weren’t kidding when you said “the green trees have a yellow cast.” (BTW, your B&W postings are some of my favorite images on this site.)
Ed, checking the curves for red content was insightful. I will bear this in mind in the future. I also agree that the color balance as provided by David does an excellent job of contrasting the greens within the yellows.
Ed S., at 500+ MB a large wall filling mural is precisely the intended usage. I did clone out the contrail. Thanks for your input.
David, thanks for including the snip of the Color Balance Layer. It was exactly what I needed. How did you arrive at those values?? Is this some arcane science that only a priveldged few know about, or did you just eyeball it!?
Again, my sincere appreciation for everyone’s comments.
OK, very nice. I think you could restore just a bit of warmth, to match @David_Kingham’s version, and for the sky go to a Selective Color adj layer and choose Cyans and add a bit of Magenta and/or move the Cyan slider a little left.
If I were going to go all out with a big print on this, I would bring more detail into the clouds.
Looking much better, I would agree that you went a little far with cooling it off and lost some of the vibrancy in the trees, and/or maybe you brought the saturation down a bit too much. The blues in the sky are looking much better as well. You’re getting very close!
No science here, just eyeballed it! Color balance seems to be one of the hardest things for people to learn, it’s very subtle nuances that come with lots of experience and experimenting.
Mark, a lot of processing is done by eyeball, and as David said that comes with experience and repetition. One way to evaluate color is to study the work of photographers whose work you and others respect. Evaluate how they handle color, saturation and other processing techniques. The intent is not to copy them, but rather to learn what respected photographers are doing , which gives you a framework for comparison.
In terms of NPN critiques, you will often hear people say color and saturation are subjective and a matter of personal taste. That is true within certain reasonable bounds, there is latitude for creativity and personal interpretation. But when 3 or4 people at NPN all make similar comments about issues with color/saturation, that’s when its time to pay attention and take a second look at what you did.
The other thing I find helpful is to process an image, put it down, and then revisit it with a fresh set of eyes a week later. A fresh perspective sometimes leads you to ask, why did I do it this way? and then I start over.
