sharpening

I'd say this scene is a good candidate for a blended exposure: one image exposed for the sky, another exposed for the shadow region. A very good video tutorial is available at The Lights Right Studio: Quicktime video. There is a ton of information available on TLR, as well as some great actions and scripts.

Jfranco, thanks for offer to post the photo I quickly edited with PSLE...I sent it to your email address you provided.
--wilt

Thanks Wilt, and your welcome. I'll be posting it as soon as it's uploaded. Looking now at my work at home on a calibrated display, the previous work being done on an uncalibrated display (my work laptop!), I'm amazed at just how bad it look! This really drives the point home of being sure that your display is tuned, so that you are talking apples and someone else sees apples!

This is Wilt's submission, posted by his permission. Really nice job -- I bet his display was calibrated!

Ok, I can't let that thing up stay as my only contribution. This is done at home on my image machine, saem workflow above except I ran the curves on the image in RGB mode - I think you'll agree that it is a little better! Russell, your actually getting a first hand lesson in the first crucial step in color management: calibrate your display!

Here goes:

Thanks for getting my photo posted, jfrancho. The two different 'interpretations' of the same scene is interesting to note what is same, yet what is different.
The range of mountains in the background are about the SAME density and saturation, yet my sky is lighter and the foreground trees are darker, and the low level foothills are less saturated in mine. Just shows how areas of emphasis within the frame can be altered with postprocessing the same scene in different ways! Quite different 'feel' in the two portrayals. not 'better' or 'worse', just 'different'.

Hi Russell,

The original version you posted was only using a limited range of tones. Is this what you refer to your 1st instance, or do you have an original file that has not been touched?
There are jpg artifacts in the lake, which manipulating make worse. There is a distinct lack of detail. If you worked on this before, it could be that you saved too many times as a jpg (each time damages the image).

All speculation, but I would like to see the original capture, if that wasn't it you posted. Oh, it would be better if you changed your avatar to reflect your acceptance of edits, so we can post the results. Otherwise they can't be posted without asking permission.

Graham

All good advice. I can't see the fixes from here bcs of our net nanny, but I know these guys do good work.

Seems to me what this photo mainly needs is levels tweaking.

The first picture is with darkened shadows and brightened highlights only - similar to boosting the contrast.

The second is with levels plus sharpening of everything except the blue area in the foreground.

Ok, I was bored so decided to offer up a Velvia twist:

Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE