lake hudson, and my first attempt at a couple things

[tumb]

Hallo, here is my first real attempt at exposure bracketing and using a mask layer to get the best sky/foreground. This is the best I could accomplish without getting some kind of crazy chromatic thing going on the skyline (where the trees meet the sky). I could get a much better sky, and/or a much better forground, but not both without fouling up my skyline. Anybody have any tips?

I used a dark sky, and medium forground and combined them in layers and tried to get the best overall with a layer mask.
BTW - this is probably not the Lake Hudson you are thinking of, this one is in east OK.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v505/mdwsr/smallPineSky.jpg

[Flagpole]

G'day Tumb!

Sorry couldn't resist as this shot is just perfect to try Fred Miranda Velvia Vision :) Here it is processed through the VV:

http://members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/Testshots/smallPineSkya.jpg

I guess all credit goes to Fred Miranda :) Btw you may pick up some tips in this article regarding blended exposurers http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml and another tip would be to play with gradient fills to get a smoother transitions between each layer. Hope you nail it

Flagpole
Sydney, Australia

[tumb]

Thanks, that's a big difference. I did download Intellisharp from FM the other day but not VV yet.

On my machine at home last night that image looked pretty good, but here at work I can drag it around on three different monitrs and it looks different on every one. I'm still trying to figure out how to get some consistency.

My original from here looks very dark, at home it was just right. Strange.

[tumb]

Another attempt here. I like the colors better on this one but I may have been a bit heavy-handed with the USM. I'm also getting some wacky overflow in the waves with the merge that I can't quite work out. One benefit out of all this is I finally tackled scripts, I found that it's MUCH easier to do this with a script and try different settings as I go than to go through the entire process over and over manually. All critiques are welcome, I am learning and appreciate any advice.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v505/mdwsr/17thSkyMergedSmall.jpg

[jonnyhorizon]

what do you think of this version
hope you dont mind me fiddleing with your pic...
http://www.johncastor.com/misc/canonforum3.jpg