How to improve.

Hello all,

For Christmas this year, I will be giving out prints from my recent travels in South America to family. In return, my present from them will be a donation to an orphanage in Peru where I spent two months doing volunteer work.

My mother wanted a print of this photo. It will be printed as an 8x10.

I am looking some more ideas/ways to possibly improve this image.

I can post the original as well if it helps - but first, I would rather see if anyone picks up on the edited bits.

Well, to me the foreground looks great. The background, of course has that hazy distant mountain look.

Depending on the software you are using, you can apply an adjustment layer (Photoshop) with a gradient mask for high contrast and saturation applied to the background and play with that or, if you are using Lightroom you can use the gradient tool and actually have some nice options for how it will work on your photo. And, with either Photoshop or Lightroom, you have the freedom to brush out or erase parts of your adjustments that adversely affect, say, the people in the foreground.

I use both CS4 and Lightroom.

Yes, the background is quite hazy. I will give this a shot, and post the results when I can!

Thank you very much!

That's a very nice photo...it appears that they were waiting for a boat to cross the lake?

I was born in Guyana on the Atlantic coast of South America and although the culture, etc. is entirely different I can really relate to this photo.

Hey PixelMagic, they were actually looking towards a bunch of of tourists who were visiting their island.. on the boat.

I'll post the original to show.

I'd print it exactly as you have shown it to us. My immediate thought was to lose a fraction on each side and the bottom, but on seconds thoughts don't. The haze creates a better feel of the distance to me.

Crazy Horse,

You've got some better contrast on the background, but a couple suggestions:

Your edit darkened the blues -- I'd suggest using one or two of the adjustment layer tools for adjusting the Blue channel to brighten and saturate things a bit, but use a mask so you don't mess with the foreground figures. The water and the blue portions of the sky can use touching up, though.

Try doing something similar to the mountains, mess with the Red and Yellow channels to get them looking more "crisp".

You can do similar things in Lightroom using brushes and the variou options to selectively adjust sections, etc.

Well, now that I know it's not real, the water all the way to the right could be improved upon a little. In the rest of the picture the water is smoother further out from the people, and gets more choppy as you get closer. Good cloning though, I probably wouldn't have picked up on it if you hadn't posted the original.

Re the original vs edit, the original is nice to my eye. Better colors and contrast.

Re 8x10 you'll have to cut things off or extend the foreground and background. An 8x12 wouldn't require cropping.

Alrighty! I think I am back to this!
I fixed the issues with the water cloning. I adjusted the levels of the mountains to bring out the yellow a bit more.

hmmm, I think I went back in a circle with this one.