Can you help with my landscape?

[andrewaxford]

Hi I took this shot on my way home from work one evening as some heavy showers moved across the moor. I guess now it would have been a good scene for an HDR image but i didnt do any bracketing. I have tried a few times to bring out the foreground detail. Is there anything that can be done?
Thanks
Andrew

[Donald]

Andrew

I put a pretty heavy duty dodge brush on it, but I'm afraid it's too far gone for me to recover. Unless people know how to do things that I don't (that's me thrown down the challenge), then I think this is one for the bin I'm afraid.

[dje]

Andrew this is the best I could do but the dark area is quite noisy.

Selected the dark area, then using Shadows/Highlights increased the shadows by 35%.

Cheers Dave

[rob marshall]

Is there anything that can be done?

Ermmm... get an ND grad filter? Seriously, that is what you needed. I put it in RAW edit and did the software equivalent, so this is what it might have looked like with an ND on the lens. You need to think about the light and how it's going to affect your shots. The human eye sees things differently to the camera.

But hey! you did the most important thing. You got the SHEEP in shot (sorry, I'm in Wales)

[Geoff F]

The alternative, Andrew, is to crop the dark bottom tighter and forget about the sheep.

Crop out the right sheep all together and clone over the left one.

[andrewaxford]

Thanks everyone you have given me some extra things to find out about ( Dodge brush, ND grad filter, Selected the dark area and used shadows /highlights)
I have a trial version of Nikon Capture NX2 can i do those things with that?
Also i copy the version i did. Does it look much too false?


Thanks everyone, Andrew

[dje]

Andrew, I dont know what you've done but you appear to have brightned up the whole image considerably - a bit too much I think. This shot really only needs the shadow areas lightened.

I can't help you with Capture NX2 but I do have View NX2 and it does include a Shadows Recovery slider which will increase the darker area only.

I did my edit in Photoshop.

Cheers Dave

[arith]

Looks alright to me. But HDR won't work since things are moving, and a filter will flare. So expensive filter is needed. I often take pics like this on purpose; I ask myself, what can I see and what can't I see. Spose that's why I get such low marks because I do blow and underexpose on purpose.

Almost forgot: duplicate layer twice, on the top choose overlay blend, inverted, with 250 pixel Gaussian blue and 50% opacity. Adjust to taste.

[Rob Douglas]

Andrew, does the Nikon capture NX2 software have a brush tool? If so I would try and use that to apply the process you used to tighten the image to just the shadow area only. The way it is now you have the sky blown out. The shadow area came out good for what you had to start with thought.

[shreds]

NX2 is a breeze to use. Zoom in to 100%, then just use the tri colour control point icon on the top bar, place a marker on the picture, then adjust the eight sliders. These cover the size of the affected area (right up to full picture and down to a very small area) the other sliders adjust contrast, brightness, saturation, hue, red, blue, green, warmth. Then select again and do another area, so you can adjust the sheep differently to the grass etc.

HTH