Old Orchard Beach Maine early AM photoshop

Hoping to get some feedback on my effort at color correction via curves manipulation.
Before...

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Color looks fine, but composition is blah.

the colors are a nice improvement, but you could really benefit by lightening the foreground/beach. DId you shoot this in raw or jpeg?

Also, as a fellow southern mainer, I've had a lot of luck including part of the OOB pier to add perspective and foreground interest. might be worth a try next time you venture out there.

sparker1 wrote in post #6608177
Color looks fine, but composition is blah.

Why would you say the colors look fine? That is whats wrong with this forum, no one is honest, ever? He WANTS feedback. If you're taking the time to type something why not give him some guidance...

Color correction via curves takes A LOT of practice. and most of the time when I see people use curves for color it is to help set WB via medium grey layer etc (I think lol)
The blues look okkk, and the actual clouds look ehh. You lost a lot of contrast in doing what ever adjustments you did...a lot. You can't really see the transition at the horizon anymore either.

Since the sky isn't tooo bad off you could have done the adjustment and then taken a black brush and painted over the foreground to mask out whatever happened to the foreground. or figure out how to do what you did a little better and then do a regular curves adjustment to bring the contrast back up...

You also have some rays coming through there. You'll need either contrast or a layer of dodging and burning to help bring that out (you can use levels/contrast slider also if you aren't involved enough with photoshop yet)


Also since you exposed almost totally for the sky it left you foreground on the dark side...you can handle that with a curved adjustment (and then mask out the sky this time) or you can use a gradient layer and tweak it till it has a nice bend with the sky...

I you have any questions shoot me a pm
Walt