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Thread: Longs Peak Colorado

  1. #1

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    Kathy

    Longs Peak Colorado

    This is one of my favorite "Longs Peak" photo's, the only problem is it was taken during the afternoon and the skiy and mountain have that hazy look -- is there anything I can do to make this better. Any tips on how this photo could have been better is also appreciated. Also I have been reading up a little on lens filters, I can get lens filters for my nikon coolpix L120 camera do you think this would be benifical or not. Thankyou.

    Longs Peak Colorado

  2. #2
    Boatman's Avatar
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    Homer

    Re: Longs Peak Colorado

    Ah, Long's Peak. I went to school in Fort Collins for a year and I was amazed at how that mountain would stand up on some days and almost disappear on others. Always a treat to see! Was this taken from around Loveland?

    If you want to enhance the mountain portion of the photo, I would suggest copying out the section from about the near tree line then run the process described my member Jiro in the article posted at High Contrast and Detail Effect using dodge and burn technique. on the portion with the mountains and sky. That technique should brighten them up add contrast. You could also achieve similar results by a contrast sharpening on the mountain sections. Copy them to a new layer in Photoshop then run the unsharp mast at a setting of about 20-50-0. That will also give them a little pop.

    I took a moment to do both of these to your image and here are the results. The USM was done at 100-40-0. Of course this was only done on a reduced copy of your image so some banding is present. If you do this to the original you should really be able to make this pop.

    USM Longs Peak Colorado

    Jiro Technique Longs Peak Colorado

  3. #3

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    Kathy

    Re: Longs Peak Colorado

    Wow the difference is amazing, thanks for showing the examples of what you were talking about it really helps to have a visual.

    This picture was taken just outside of Estes Park on Devil Gulch Road, I have seen Longs Peak many times before but this was the first time from this view . . . it was breathtaking!!
    What photo editing software do you use?

    Thanks for the helpful information.

  4. #4
    Boatman's Avatar
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    Homer

    Re: Longs Peak Colorado

    Breaks my heart to see it; it's so beautiful.

    I use Picasa for organizing and web posting and Photoshop CS4 for any serious PP work. I normally shoot in RAW plus a small JPG. The JPGs get used for small prints and web images. The RAW files you can right click on and open them right up out of Picasa into Photoshop, which is very convenient.

    BTW, I used the the marque tool to coarse select the sky and mountains from the field and trees, then used the Select/Color Range tool to take out just the tones I wanted to work on. Contol-J puts this in a new layer where you can work with the tones in just the selected part. A few more clicks and voila - more contrast in the mountains.

    OK that's a simplified version, but this IS the place to come and learn this stuff.

  5. #5
    FrankMi's Avatar
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    Frank Miller

    Re: Longs Peak Colorado

    Hi Kathy, I take it that a reshoot may not be practical but if you can, an early morning attempt my give better results with less haze.

    Homer has done a great job of minimizing the haze and if you do landscapes, the link to Jiro's technique in Homer's post can really help. I use Jiro's technique quite a bit, particularly on some of my older images taken before I got my DSLR and started taking photography seriously.

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