How to make this better?

[ctgirl]

I finally got photoshop (YEAH!! ) so I've been playing around a little and wanted to know what everyone thinks. I think I might have gone too far with some of the green, but if I can make the backround better I think it might be okay. There was a horrible fog the day I took these, and unfortunatly can't go back any time soon, so wanted to know if anyone knew how to correct this, and of course would like some C&C. I've included the origional so that you can see what I was working with. Thank you.

Here's the origional...




and here's after photoshop...

[98photo]

I don't think I did any better than you but let me know what you think. I just played with the levels a little and added some blue.
I couldn't get it to upload as large as yours.

[ctgirl]

I think the bottom trees look better, but i like the pop in the top branch. Is there anyway to do both? The only way I know of is to do layers, but still knew to photoshop so haven't quite figured that all out yet, though I'm sure I'll get there.

[ghosh]

I liked both of your editing. I feel ctgirl 's picture is little more than green. Evey tree looks so same while 98photo's picture there is lot of different shades of green.

[delinian]

This is my edit, and how I did it.
http://www.radiantvista.com/archive/video_tutorials/6/
Attachment 102985

[taramcg]

I love the edit Dennis did. It looks natural and picks up a lot of detail.

[ghosh]

Taramcg did you mean 'Delinian' by 'Dennis '? I liked what Delinian did but alas my internet connection is so slow that I cant down load the Tutorials video.

[Palladium]

Here's a workup where I pumped up the volume quite abit - if I was working with the full res image I probally would have detailed the top branches better but yu can still get the idea.

anyway I duped the image and changed the visibility from normal to multiply. I liked the way this looked but I still wanted to increase the intensity of the dark areas - so I duped the new layer but used a mask to mask out most of the greens and left the dark areas.

[W&J]

I kind of liked this crop...

[ctgirl]

Delinian- I really like what you did, thanks for the tutorial too.
Pallidium- I like what you did too, I like how the colors pop more and eliminates the fog quite a bit.
W&J- Thank you for the idea, I never even thought about cropping it, for some reason, I guess I was just too focused on the colors and fog.
Thank you everyone for helping out and giving me all the good ideas I can't wait till I can find the time to play agian.

[Radtech1]

Hi, and boy, you are in for years of fun now that you have Photoshop.

Like most everyone else, I agree that the original needs more density. The way I went about it is somewhat like Palladium in that I used duplicate layers and blend modes. In this case, I duplicated it twice. The middle layer I set to Darken as it's blend mode, and the top layer I set to Overlay. (Don't worry if these terms mean nothing, it will come. Please take a look at THIS THREAD for a couple of screen-shots on how this works.)

So, once I did that, the green looked TOO green, so I went back to my Layers Palate, selected the top (Overlay) layer and de-saturated it. That brought the colors back to a realistic range.

Then a little burning in the upper left and that was it. Hope you find a technique that works for you. BTW, I like the shot.

Rad

[ctgirl]

Thanks Rad, I'm already addicted to PS, I keep finding all sorts of helpful info on the net and just can't seem to read enough! As for the shot, thanks for the compliment I have tons more from there and love the place, can't wait to go back. It's a great place for photos since there's no fence or restrictions on getting to close, I just have to get over the fear of falling off