Two landscapes

I took these landscapes (?) on a recent holiday and I have a mind to enlarge one of them. Before I do, though, could I have some honest C&C on them. Which one do you prefer? Is either actually worthy of enlargement?

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I like #1... I'd straighten it and crop out more of the sky, and I think its too hot - see the sky, the guy in white and the road. The colours also seem a little saturated, but that might be just me. You could also try playing with the balance by cropping out either the far left or the right (that small shed) - or not - its a matter of personal feeling.

I find #2 less interesting. Maybe a line of female butts isn't my thing? No wait...that IS my thing...so it must be that my eye wanders between the figures and the treeline.

Thanks Stirfried - I'll do a little work on No 1 along the lines you suggested and re-post it.

Is this a better treatment for No 1?

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To my eyes, yup - that's looking pretty good. But what do you think?
You'll likely get other advice in other directions...

Yes, I think you were right. I think it looks better.

I also think the second attempt looks better

I still think it needs to rotate about 0.5 degrees anticlockwise (if it doesn't mess with the sharpness too much).

I would print the first one, it's interesting and you can tell the story of it to your guests.

Thanks folks. Stirfried - why should tilting it another .5 degrees 'mess with the sharpness'?

Roy Mathers wrote in post #7507644
Thanks folks. Stirfried - why should tilting it another .5 degrees 'mess with the sharpness'?

Hi Roy - you didn't mention the camera you used (i.e. which pixel resolution) but if you take one of these web images and rotate it 0.5 degrees you'll get some nasty aliasing effects, due to taking the grid of the image pixels and the grid of the screen pixels and twisting between them. This shouldn't be a problem with a full RAW image, but a medium-resolution jpg might suffer.
(Its yet another reason to shoot RAW, so you can do this kind of adjustment without the in-camera smoothing).

Because of this I (and I think most people) do any rotation at the very beginning, before applying sharpening etc.

Hi Stirfried - the camera was (is!) a 40D and the original shot was taken in RAW. I have made on more slight tweak in the straightening - without any noticeable effects in the sharpness.

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Looking good!
OK, one more thing I'm going to throw out - and I'm *really* not saying its better, just have a play with it yourself before you hang it on your wall.

I see the people as the central part of the photo, but when I look at it from a distance they're lost in a sea of green. So what I've done below is crop a bit more (actually quite a lot ) and given it a more classic 'rule of 3rds' composition, with the tree, the closer building and the horizon all being about 1/3 into the image, and cut out the far left building which I thought wasn't adding anything, and the far right one to bring the focus more to the people.
So on one hand I've simplified it in terms of compositional elements, but on the other hand lost some of the 'vista' feel that the original has.
Oh, I also tweaked the color balance because it looked a little red to me - *might* be this laptop monitor.
Also remember that an image can look quite different when seen on a monitor and on a wall/frame etc. I'd suggest printing a couple of different versions out on simple paper first and seeing how they look from a bit further away - I *think* the fuller version will have too much green there.

P.S. If its any consolation I spend days agonizing over mine too
P.P.S. Oops, shrunk it a bit too much making it an attachment.

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Roy, you need to darken the skies. Here's a good how-to video. Give it a try before you finally decide.

http://www.photoanswer​s.co.uk …in-Photoshop/?&R=EPI-1447

I like the leading lines in number one. Where was it taken?