CC and Advices please!

5 exposures HDR combined in Photomatix, edited in Lightroom 4. I wish I am good enough with Photoshop to do the scene justice. This was the best I could do with LR at the moment, going for a more realistic look rather than grungy HDR.

Seeking advice on how to make the image better, because I really like this shot, and would like to print it someday. Needing advices on how to decrease halos in the trees in the right side, and color bleeds on the stone walkway, making stones more realistic colors. Or any advice of what needs to be fix and/or how would be greatly appreciated.

I do have access to PS6 and Nik plug-ins. Just very noobie with them. Thank you in advance.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …633923921/in/ph​otostream/

I think you've done very well with this shot. The halos can be dealt with in several ways. One is to just use the darken tool set for highlights then midtones, going about it with low opacity several times until you get just the right amount of blend. Since the limbs are mostly dark shadow, they should not be affected. A more complicated way is to do a selection of the sky based on color, then clone-stamp or paint in the proper color selected from some adjacent sky.

The color bleeds on the walkway could be fixed by selecting the walkway then doing a selective color layer and fiddling with sliders to your liking.

I really love this shot...it's got a great sense of depth and I LOVE the colors...
I say great job!

That's a great shot.

Nicely done.

I like it!! Some minor adjustment to fix the halos as Qbx sugguests. I wouldn't worry about the color bleed, it is the reflection of the sky and seems quite natural in this shot. You could always pull it back using a saturation layer and then mask out the sky. Overall I really like this!

i thinks its a great shot!

Other than the halos its a great shot.

Thank you for the feedbacks and great advices. Will try to use the darken tool as Qbx suggested to blend the halos, but probably would not have time to do detail editing to the image until next week.

One of our neighbor really like the below photo, and I was gonna send it to printer shop to give him as a gift. Thus, I would love some comments and critiques of whatever need to be done to it before sending in for print. With my eyes, it seems ready for print, but I may overlook stuffs. It's also for future photos of this place since I'm more than likely will return to these locations in near future to take some more pictures. So any comments/advices about composition, crop, exposures, anything really would be much appreciated. Thank you again for taking your time to view, comments, and for the advices.

This was taken on the same morning at the Reflecting Pool, single exposure 20s, f11, iso 100

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …8585208655/in/p​hotostream

Another lovely image. I'd be tempted to try removing the pale shoreline on the right ad see if you prefer it.

Martin Dixon wrote in post #15818749
Another lovely image. I'd be tempted to try removing the pale shoreline on the right ad see if you prefer it.

I thought about that too, but that pale line is actually the stone/concrete slab walkway on the side of the Reflecting Pool. It was lighter color and reflected light differently than the pool. I was standing closer to the right end corner of the Pool, trying to give a different perspective to the familiar and famous scene. The left side (walkway) was far away and dark (and not showing up in photo). May be I should darken it a bit?

I think you're good to go; but before printing, I'd make a copy & sharpen it a lot. During printing images tend to go soft.

Qbx wrote in post #15818909
I think you're good to go; but before printing, I'd make a copy & sharpen it a lot. During printing images tend to go soft.

Thank you! Just order a metallic print of it. Can't wait.

Love them both.

I might warm up the white balance a little on the first.