On walk with my husband, this tree with yellow moss on it’s bare branches and roots caught my eye. I spent quite a bit of time working out how to best capture it. So far I’ve done some dodging and burning, cloning out distractions, highlighting the Moss, tried to help the foliage and background trees recede even further and a couple of other minor adjustments. I’m trying to decide if it still looks too “messy” and what I could do to minimize that.
Any general feedback welcome but I especially some views on color/saturation, woodland editing. I’m still working out what I can do in post and and learning a ton! I’ll post a raw file and one with LR edits in the comments. Thanks! @asliceofbrie2020![image|500x500]
The work you’ve put into this image is very obvious. I’m impressed by how you saw this and realized it’s value. Personally I think you’ve taken this image as far as it will go. The ‘messiness’ you speak of comes from the upper yellow branch, which is far more chaotic than the roots below. There’s a relationship between the two and it would have been nice for them to be similar in structure. I think you’ve done an admiral job in bringing out the richness in tones and contrast in colors. The key is to simplify that upper yellow branch by removing some of that ‘webiness’. I don’t know if that could be done with content-aware edits but it would be an arduous task.
Thank you Igor. I definitely wish those branches were less chaotic! It was worth the time spent to edit this one because I am still working on honing my skills and need the practice. I do shudder at the thought of so much cloning and I’m not sure I want to attempt it but I think that would be the solution. Alternatively, I am wondering if it would help if I went back into PS and selectively burned some of those little branches. Could help draw the eye away from them to focus on the larger structure. Might try that tonight and see if that makes a difference.
Are you familiar with content-aware fill. It usually does a better job than cloning but is time consuming. In Photoshop go to the Edit tab. Select Fill and then choose the content aware option. Prior to that you lasso the subject that you want filled in. It recognizes lines or bright spots or blurry leaves and replaces them. The trick is to work on small selections at a time because it can’t read your mind. You have to make it obvious what you want changed.
When I first saw this image I said to myself, that looks like the kind of image that @Igor_Doncov shoots, based on both it’s subject matter and the environment in which it was taken. Igor is the master at these types of intimate scenes with complexity, so if Igor’s comments are generally favorable, then you are doing well Brie.
I agree with Igor that there is a relationship between the mossy branches and the root, and that the top part of the branches is adding perhaps a bit too much complexity/chaos. I also agree with Igor’s comment that you did a good job of processing this to bring out the richness in tones and contrast. In my few trips to the Pacific Northwest I have been amazed at the golden color of the moss in places like the Columbia Gorge. I think your processing here has done a good job of creating more color separation between yellow and green which makes the moss really pop. By shifting green more to green, you emphasized the yellow moss.
My suggestion would be to consider a tighter crop, primarily to reduce the complexity at the very top of the image. It also would have the secondary benefits of removing some white flowers right along the left frame edge (eye magnets). Here is my proposed crop. I also slightly warmed up the green s in shadow at the back, a subjective decision.
In our group we had a sweet young lady that was, I guess what you would call homely. The guys were always on her case. “Loosen up, Annushka”. “Lower your neckline”. This went on for years. Finally, one day she couldn’t take it any more. On day she faced her tormentors on the stairwell of the old school house and announced. “I’m not that square. I SURF!”. Nothing changed after that except that she because known as Surfer.
And so in the same vein I want to say. I do grand landscapes! (reluctantly).
I said you were the master of intimate scenes with complexity. That does not preclude you from doing a great job with grand landscapes, and I think you do very well with your grand-scapes as well. But Bries image reminded me of some of your intimate work.
I do know about this but haven’t tried it yet. I’ll have to give it a try and see what I think about using it on this image. It will be useful for the future, at any rate. Thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for this Ed! I’ve been sitting on this image for a while puzzling out what I would want to do to it but didn’t have the skills yet. I did notice those white flowers and they popped even more when I took out lots of other distractions. I will definitely work on this image more and may crop it or take out some of the flower distractions on the edge. I feel like if I crop in too much then there isn’t enough of the other tree. It’s definitely something I’m going to take my time considering. Thanks so much!
A darker B&W conversion might enhance the sinister look of these branches even further, if Brie is interested in taking that approach. A radical departure from the original post, but perhaps interesting to consider.
That was my husband’s suggestion because it does neutralize color distractions but I love the yellow moss so… He will love this! And I love that there are so many choices in where to take an image. Definitely a possibility.
I actually prefer the color version too, the moss is killer. But good images can often have more than one interpretation, and this would also make a decent B&W.
Agreed! I felt like fooling around with it again tonight so here’s another version that hopefully has less distractions. I cropped in tighter, did a little more cloning to remove some bright spots, burned some of the yellow moss branches that make it distracting and added a little more vignette.
I like this a lot, i think you have gotten to a good place with this last rework. It’s interesting to see the progression of this image through the critique process.
