Post processing challenge - KS milo

Here is a shot of good ol Kansas milo.
Boring, I know. But it's got the most color thus far.

I was wondering if anyone would like to process this. I am curious how it would turn out.
I still have not got the hang of Roman's HDR technique yet.
The PS Canon converter is a bit different than that in his tutorial.

Here is the jpeg version:
(Click for full picture.)


I hope the link below for the .raw file download works...
http://www.mediafire.com/?92obzzm1gre

Andrew

Hey Andrew,

Thanks for donating a file. I will definitely look at it when I get back into NYC (Monday).

James

Andrew
I got it downloaded but can't open it,, have tried with all my photoshop programs,,pscs, pscs3,pse5.0, but won't work,, I keep getting a black and white pic, Never seen prob like this before,, DAve

Andrew,

I had the same problem - when I open the file I have a single channel B&W image. I get a selection option to open multiple channels, but when I indicate 3 channels it errors out. I am not sure what the problem is.
I am using PS CS2.

I couldn't get the RAW file to open so used the jpg file instead,, Lightened it, adj the exposure, increased the saturation, gradient on the sky, resized and USM, What ya think? good, bad or terrible? DAVe

Here is the original Canon RAW format (CR2).
http://www.mediafire.com/?5gzqhjpgxts

I tried to covert it to .raw for ease of use, but apparently it didn't take. Sorry about that. Very strange.

That edited jpeg looks very good, by the way.

Andrew

The RAW file worked fine,, not sure this is much better using the RAW file, but did give me a bit more to work with,, I just got a new monitor last week and havn't been able to get the colors quite the way I want them yet. I did basically the same thing to this as I did the jpg file. I played with the gamma correction under exposure in adjustments CS3. Not sure what it does, but kind of like the outcome,, DAve

Here is my version. I did my changes almost entirely using Curves. I particularly tried to bring separation between the reds and yellows using LAB curves. Not sure if this is better - but it is different.

I notice there is a bit of noise in the sky in my version - I did not try to remove it and I am not sure why I notice it in my file more than others...

Dave

My processing results turned out much like dave_lines' did. Thanks for the posts. I know it wasn't much to work with.

Andrew

Andrew - Here's my post-processing result:


First I removed a bit of noise from the blue channel. Then I straightened and cropped the image to my taste. After some basic levels, hue/saturation and curves adjustments I set up a gradient with the foreground color sampled from the dark green leaves at the bottom of the pic and background color sampled from the blue sky at the top. I applied the gradient from bottom to top, adjusted opacity etc. in an attempt to create more depth differentiation front to back so the image might 'pop' a little more.

I like the smoke which adds interest. I tried to emphasize the fact that the smoke has drifted L to R, visible as haze, against the sky which needed a little more blue than in the original to separate smokey haze from sky.

This is a detail-rich landscape that would be easy to over sharpen. To avoid that I down-sized using bicubic instead of bicubic sharper and sharpened selected areas by hand.

Thanks for sharing your image so we could all learn from it.

Buddy,

Thanks for describing your workflow.

Can you help me understand why you did the gradient from foreground sampled color to a background sampled color? While I understand how to do that in PS - I do not understand why you did it. You said to create more "depth perception", but I am not following you. I have never heard of someone doing that technique, so am curious.

I like the way your version turned out.

Dave

Thanks Dave.

It's just something I read about, I think, in a photography magazine or in one of my books. What it is, is an alternative to curves, levels, contrast/brightness, exposure, and a myriad of other avenues within PSCS2 used to change the relationship between lighter and darker areas of the image. Two main advantages of a gradient include 1) not only can you vary the opacity of the gradient layer, but you can use the eraser tool to expose the primary background layer under the gradient, and 2) it's a neat way to deal with the fact that very often there's a light fall-off within the scene and you wind up with something like, lets say, a too bright foreground but a nicely exposed background. On top of that let's say there's too much yellow throughout the whole picture. You could set up a gradient from dark blue to light blue (you could choose another color - whatever you think will counteract the yellow). Place the cursor where you want to introduce the dark blue (to tone down the brightness of the too yellow foreground) and extend the gradient in the direction you want, towards the area where you got the light blue from. (Naturally you're doing all of this in a new, transparent layer) Then adjust the opacity of the layer overall to darken the foreground but leave the background more or less unaffected in terms of exposure, erase here and there as needed and fine tune in any other way you might care to so that the blue tint of the gradient mellows out the yellow overall and also darkens the foreground. The gradient tool has a lot of flexibility just like all the tools in photoshop so really it's uses are endless.

I hope that's not too confusing. The gradient tool is discussed in the Adobe PS manual, all the after-market books about photoshop, in magazines and on forums. So this is not some cowboy deal I made up on my own.

The thing about it is that the other tools I mentioned above work so well, you might not have much occasion to use this gradient technique. I use it every now and again though. It may or may not be any better than other techniques - but it did work well for me here because the image was divided evenly into large areas I wanted to modify.

Man, photoshop is deep!

I may have my own shot for pp challenge. I have some Yellowstone shots that I may want some help with.

James