Shoot of my GF at the beach

HappySnapper90 wrote in post #12754254
I'm actually not digging what you've done. You've made it look like a storm is coming. Here's my 3 minutes Lightroom fix up. White balance was way off.. too cold. There is still blueness to the sky, it's not blown out and represents a sunny day at the beach.

Agreed - I only made the change to address comments made before my posting, which was the horizon and that the sky was overexposed that that the OP should have used an ND filter. I simply added a gradient layer in PS to emulate a ND filter to bring the blue back. Like you, I probably spent a full 3 minutes adding it, and never adjusted the Opacity of the layer to reduce the darkness that I added. I was primarily just trying to show that it is very simple to add an ND effect like this in PS if you dont have one - or forgot to use it.

I also didnt make any other color changes (e.g. white balance) which you did - and I do like better than the original.

keny wrote in post #12755227
yea looks very nice too i like it you only played with the white balance?

Not just white balance. Tone curve, fill light, recovery, color luminance, saturation and vibance (decreased). Here is my LR list of adjustments. And tone curve "linear" instead of the default medium.

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I recognize that there are issues with the technical aspects of these, but the one thing that would be relatively easy to do and would improve the shots remarkably would be to improve her facial expression. She looks so bored and disinterested that the shots lose a lot of interest... She's lovely, but ... Thanks for sharing.

Check into a flash even an old used one like sigma super series. That would help situations like the beach shot, plus you could under expose background and make it up with flash on subject.