Rocky Mountain Image Blend

I've been staring at this for hours and I need other eyes to help me tweak this:

The sky is one layer, the rest is another. Masked the sky and erased it revealing the layer behind.

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How many images did you take?

You not only have a lack of contrast in the mountains, you have problems in the water and the upper right corner.

chauncey wrote in post #6331959
How many images did you take?

You not only have a lack of contrast in the mountains, you have problems in the water and the upper right corner.

IIRC, I have five total frames with this framing bracketed -2 -1 0 +1 +2

The water does show at least some clipping in the brightest areas in all but the -2 exposure. The sky only blows at +2.

Mamma Nature decided she wanted a hole in the clouds in the upper right and I didn't want to argue with her...

I suppose I could clone some in...

I like the image and you did a good job not overlooking the details like the reflected sky in the water (same color). But if you want an honest opinion, I will say that when I viewed the picture, the very first thing my eye was drawn to was the edge between the mountain and the sky at the center and just left of center. Perhaps it was that one bright spot at center that drew attention.

There is something about that edge that makes the sky look fake. I really don't know what it is, but perhaps it's the incredible sharpness of mountain / sky edge. But when viewing (and I always view before reading a person's text so as not to be biased) I instantly knew the sky was dropped in.

But I really don't know. Perhaps if you're better with photoshop than I am you can make that sky slightly overlap the top edge of the mountains (as if the clouds are low and just coming over the mountains). If opaqued back and done well, it would visually join the two.

Jay, when I work on something like this, I find that it turns out better if you get rid of the spikes prior to the blending process.

Working in ACR, I crank the recovery slider to the right as far as necessary on each of the exposures and
if needed work with curves, anything to pull those spikes to the left.

Then I blend them in photoshop and expand the midtone contrast in "shadows/highlights.

I do think that it might be oversharpened which would explain the sky "problem that CannedHeat mentioned.

I feel blinded because I didn't notice this before, but I think I may have identified the aforementioned sky thingie. You have a case of Light Direction Mixed Up Itis Syndrome . In the sky, the sunset is obviously straight forward - hence that bright spot. But on the mountains to the right, the light is coming from behind, at camera right. I think that may confuse the human brain - at least my pea-sized one.

With that break in the clouds it looks like that's where the light should be coming from, but I think the most obvious thing is that the mountains are so sharp and the rest isn't as sharp.

All in all, I really like what you're doing - it is super close!

So, the problem I see with this picture is that the snow on the mountains is much brighter than the sky. Except for those rare instances where the light is behind the viewer and the clouds are dark over the horizon, the ground is just about always less-bright than the sky. In this case, I'm assuming you took 5 shots within a short period of time. That means that the mountains were illuminated by the sky. So, they can't reflect more light than they are being hit with... which means that the snow highlights should be no brighter than the brightest part of the sky. The reason this picture just screams "I'm made from two pictures" is because we humans recognize that the snow shouldn't look brighter and whiter than the sky. Even if we don't know it, our brain is asking, "Why is the snow white, when there's no white light around?" It makes us suspicious. Same reason some HDRs look artificial.

Anyway, if you have 5 shots at -1, -1, 0, +1, +2, this could be a good candidate for HDR.

Otherwise, you need to do something about the blown-out whites in the snow and the creek.

~P

Just as a comparison, this is the best I was able to do using just one frame with all tweaks done in LR2:

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CannedHeat wrote in post #6332402
I feel blinded because I didn't notice this before, but I think I may have identified the aforementioned sky thingie. You have a case of Light Direction Mixed Up Itis Syndrome . In the sky, the sunset is obviously straight forward - hence that bright spot. But on the mountains to the right, the light is coming from behind, at camera right. I think that may confuse the human brain - at least my pea-sized one.

Nope...

The sunset was nearly directly in the lowest notch in the mountains...

The two images I tried to blend were shot with no more than five seconds elapsed between them.

Mr FlyingPhotog,

There is a bit of harshness in the transition from the mountains to the sky. If it were mine, I would slightly dodge the edge of the mountain.

BUT THAT IS NOT WHERE THE REAL PROBLEM IS.

The HUGE problem - HUGE - is that the color cast on the mountains in your original post do not match the color cast of the sky. On your first post, the sky has a very warm color cast, and the mountains (most likely by virtue of ^ the contrast) has a very cool color cast. Very cool.

Notice on the second post, the mountains do not have such a cool tint. In fact, the snow seems to almost have a sepia tint to it. Much more natural, given the sky that is visible to the viewer.

If you were to shift the tint (photo filter, hue/saturation, adjustments - however you want to do it), if you were to shift the tint of the mountains on your original post it would be a much more pleasing - and therefore, more convincing, presentation.

Rad

Radtech1 wrote in post #6334308
Mr FlyingPhotog,

There is a bit of harshness in the transition from the mountains to the sky. If it were mine, I would slightly dodge the edge of the mountain.

BUT THAT IS NOT WHERE THE REAL PROBLEM IS.

The HUGE problem - HUGE - is that the color cast on the mountains in your original post do not match the color cast of the sky. On your first post, the sky has a very warm color cast, and the mountains (most likely by virtue of ^ the contrast) has a very cool color cast. Very cool.

Notice on the second post, the mountains do not have such a cool tint. In fact, the snow seems to almost have a sepia tint to it. Much more natural, given the sky that is visible to the viewer.

If you were to shift the tint (photo filter, hue/saturation, adjustments - however you want to do it), if you were to shift the tint of the mountains on your original post it would be a much more pleasing - and therefore, more convincing, presentation.

Rad

Thank You Rad. I'll have a look at that particular adjustment. Appreciate it.

You might get some improvement if you push recovery and clarity farther right. Plus...

You've got a hillside of forest that is basically one color without variation and at this time of year it's a muddy green.
I've got the same problem here,

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I just thought of an easy way to address that. Drop your second image on top of (different layer) the first image and set the blend mode to "Color" or "Hue". Then mask away all else using your favorite masking technique. Give that a pop and post the results, bet it looks better.

Rad

Just fartin around.

Got rid of the cyan cast on the snowy mountians. Softened up the edge of the same. Little bit o'contrast. Some dodge and burn.

Rad

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