C&C or re-edit requested - clouds

[davidedric]

Hi,

Here are a couple of images. The first is what I found sooc (by which I mean RAW through Lightroom using Adobe Standard). Of course it looks nothing like what I remembered seeing, so I did some fairly aggressive (for me) pp in Lightroom to try and re-created the drama of the sky. I appreciate that no-one else saw what I saw, but I would be very interested in what you think of my efforts, and how you would attempt to inject more oomph into the image.

Thanks,

Dave

[Shadowman]

The second image may not be what you remembered but it is a good adjustment. I recently did a cloudy scene edit and after setting the white balance, I adjusted highlight/whites and shadows/blacks. The next step was trying to pull some details out of the light areas; similar to what you did.

[Manfred M]

The clouds certainly work better in the second image. Now if you could coax some details out of the hill in the foreground, you'd have an even stronger image.

[Stagecoach]

Dave, I think you have done a good job on the sky but not too sure about the blue in it? I suppose it comes down to how you want your finished image but after having a quick play I would suggest to consider also using the foreground as to me its inclusion with the great colour heightens the impact of the skies.

Here's my interpretation of the idea but the sky is know where as good as yours in my view.



Grahame

[dje]

Dave I think this is very much a matter of personal taste. For what it's worth, here's my take on it.

Like Grahame, I think it is worth keeping the foreground grass. I also thought that a 16:9 aspect ratio was appropriate.

I did a bit of work in ACR with highlights, clarity and colours and then used Nik filters in CS6.

Dave

[Kodiak]

•
At this point, Grahame's rendition looks better, IMO, because it best balance
both the sky and the land… more natural fell!

[davidedric]

Thank you all very much for the comments and especially for taking the time to re-work the image.

I knew that I was taking it rather too far, but wasn't sure where to go back to, or take it to. I like the way the clouds have come out at the top right, but, yes, the blue colour at the left isn't right. I will do some more work .

For interest, I was using radial filters to try and extract cloud detail and deal with very different colour temperatures in the scene as I saw it (a technique suggested by George Jardine).

Cheers

Dave