What can I do with this

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I am a novice as far as P.S is concerned, can anyone tell me what I should be doing to enhance a c***p image like this? It was going to be a sunset shot but it got all misty and flat.

There are a couple of nice shots in this series but I am lost as to how to make them pop! Any tips will be most welcome.

Geoff

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Using two layers darken the top layer mask out the people in the dark layer to reveal the lighter version. I may have darkened the background a little two much. Then I cropped out the bright spot in the upper left corner.

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Along the lines of what rw2 did, I would create a curves mask and in the RGB tab create sort of a subtle "S" shape to the line to give the sky and water some contrast (bringing out some detail in the sky), then while still in the mask layer paint over the couple using black to erase them from the mask.... therefore keeping their original look in place.

Hope that makes sense to you.

Replacing the sky is an option.

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Well here's my crack at it. Duplicated the layer using multiply blending mode and applied a gradient layer mask so the effect faded towards the foreground and also masked the couple out, added a gradient layer to the sky only using soft light, added a levels tweak to lighten midtones then a hue/sat layer to drop yellow and red saturation a bit. Just a bit far gone though I reckon Geoff, not to mention the absence of feet.

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hawkeye60 wrote in post #8090957
Replacing the sky is an option.

That's what I was going to suggest too and maybe correct the color of the water a bit.

Here's my 2 minute rendition.

Cheers!

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Ha! Good morning guys! Thanks for all your suggestions.. most of which are way over my head. Looks like I have MASSES to learn.

I like the sky replacement shots and FWIW I prefer the look of The Ghost's shot but dislike what looks like a lot of blur which indicates photo trickery (guess that is not a technical term ?)

I will go and learn the steps needed and play, but time is always in short supply.

Thank you all very much for your input, at I now know something can be done to tweak the shots. As for the feet, yes I have em, I just used an image from a series for the post that I would not be using.

Thx again, Geoff

Yeah the blur effect wasn't really done well on my part as I didn't spend a lot of time on it. The idea behind it though was to match the focus drop off rate of the original to the replaced sky/sunset I put into it. Odds are, with a larger picture, and more time to play with it, that effect could be pulled off more convincingly.

I often go out and take pictures of clouds and sunsets specifically for using them as replacements in other pictures I take where the sky was too flat or boring looking. Careful sky replacement can do amazing things for your images and its fun too, especially when you get it right and no one is the wiser of what you've done!

Below, an example of one that I did recently...

Cheers!

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Thanks Jeff, I loved the whole colour oops! color balance of what you did. I am going to get a book out and learn how to replace skies this weekend. I will either borrow a sky from another job or get out and take one.
Geoff