Morning Moose

[Teton Chuck]

I was going through some photos that I took this past spring - purging- and came across this one that I had overlooked. Initially I had ignored it because it is not a great shot of the moose. But after looking at it I came to the conclusion that the moose simply provides an anchor for a lovely early morning setting. Comments and suggestions are appreciated. Do click on it to get the large version.

[pinakibaidya]

This is really beautiful.I think if you could include a little bit of sky and tip of the trees it would be better.

[Mike Buckley]

I like the warm tones but I'm not partial to the flare. Some like flare for stylistic reasons, but it's usually presented in a style that is different from this one. If you changed the color balance in the area of the ground affected by the flare to match the rest of the image, I think the image would look 100% better. Just my thinking.

[Teton Chuck]

Thank you Pinakibaidya for your comment. Mike, I appreciate your help with this photo. Here is my attempt to make the correction you suggested. It is the best I can do with the software I know how to use at this time. Let me know what you think.

Chuck

[Mike Buckley]

Great job, Chuck! It wasn't until I compared the two images by toggling them back and forth in the Lightbox that I realized that you simply cloned the affected area to correct it.

[Teton Chuck]

Mike, I have Elements 10 but have found it difficult to learn. Perhaps I can revisit this photo when I get a handle on E10. Thanks again for your help.

chuck

[kdoc856]

Hey, Chuck

I made almost no progress with PSE when I was just reading about it-it always made sense during the read but I could never recall the progression when I went to apply it to my own images. I have done far better watching some of the many excellent video tutorials, and mimicking whatever they do with one of my own images, just flipping back and forth. I would also recommend just committing initially to a single tutorial source. There are often several ways to accomplish the same thing and each expert has his/her own preferences that work, but it gets all mixed up in my little head if I listen to several sources before I have it firmly entrenched. I would gladly give away the books I bought for PSE-just didnt help.

Kevin

[Mike Buckley]

Chuck,

I also had a very difficult time learning how to use PSE and never became comfortably in command of the program. When I purchased a Nikon camera system, I tried out Nikon Capture NX. I found the program to be immediately far more intuitive than PSE and have never looked back.

However, Capture NX is loved so much by those who love it and hated so much by those who hate it that I'm actually hesitant to write this post. That's because I don't want any flame wars to be started. Even for those, like me, who love the program, we're more than miffed that the last upgrade was more than three years ago. Some of us feel that Nikon might never upgrade the program again, though they do provide free updates from time to time with minor changes and everything necessary to convert RAW files created by newly released Nikon cameras.

Nikon Capture NX is of course intended to convert and post-process Nikon RAW files but it's no less useful when post-processing JPEGs or TIFFs.

The program has certain limitations by Nikon's design. As an example, there is only one way to move pixels from one area to another and you can't reliably control which pixels will be moved. As a result, there is no perspective tool and the like. For the rare circumstances that I need to move pixels around, I had always used PSE but very recently changed to using GIMP because it's free.

Capture NX2 (the current version) has an unusual 60-day trial period. If you're as frustrated with grasping PSE as I was, you might want to consider trying it out when you've got some free time. You've got lots of that, right?

[Teton Chuck]

Kevin, I have had the same experience with books for PSE. Your suggestion of following along with my own image and letting it all come together over time sounds like it might work.

Mike, I think I will give Nikon Capture NX a try as well. The good news is that I do have a lot of free time - except that I have pretty much filled it up either doing or learning about photography. Being old has some advantages.

Thank you both for your help. - Chuck