Craigdarroch Castle

[Kyle]

A shot of Craigdarroch castle from Victoria. The lighting wasn't great, and the sky was very dull but I still think the shot works and I'd like some feedback on it.

[rpcrowe]

Nice shot but, it needs a bit of perspective correction. How to do it depends on what photo editing program you are using...

[just me]

I like it, but agree with Richard about the need of some correction.....

Griddi.......

[TonyW]

This is a nice picture that is worth thinking about. I agree about the perspective but also, to me, it looks overexposed. If you reduce the exposure and experiment with levels, etc, I think it can look better and you can get a little structure out of the sky that i can't see as it is.

Others might disagree with me. There have been discussions about these points in other threads.

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, I think the exposure processing works for what you had to work with, any more contrast and the cars would stand out more than necessary. I would have been tempted to darken the sky but then it isn't the lightest tone in the composition; so perhaps the sky is fine as is.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Kyle,

This is actually one shot where I might consider not correcting the verticals for perspective; it is obvious that we're looking up a couple of levels of terraced grass and steps, so we expect to see this. If I did change the perspective (because the column on left is quite angled), I would still not make it parallel to the sides of the image and you need to be careful it doesn't appear 'shortened' as a consequence, it may need a vertical stretch to compensate - it depends how the correction is applied.

It may benefit from a subtle increase of clarity (in LR/PS speak) - I now see you have this at +2, I'd try +10 and go from there.

It would also (for viewing on line) benefit from being properly downsized to be 1000 px in height (and whatever the width comes out at), then being Final Sharpened with USM at 100%, Radius 0.3 px and Threshold 0 or 1 in PS, before being uploaded to TinyPic. I say this because I suspect you uploaded a larger image and TinyPic has downsized it to 1599 px wide (and 1161 px high) without sharpening in order to reduce bandwidth demands on their servers, which harms the image.

There probably is some clouds to be recovered from the sky, but again I'd suggest not over doing it - but I think you already know this.

Cheers, Dave

[TonyW]

An interesting thing about the perspective here that I did not pick up on at first is that the tower in line with the steps is vertical. This gives the impression that you are looking at the building from the bottom of the steps rather than from the centre, which is how you might approach it. Perhaps the photo was taken from there.

[rpcrowe]

I played with this a bit using the CS6 edit>transform tool. I think it could be tweaked a bit more but the perspective doesn't hit me in the face with this copy...

[Tronhard]

How about this one then?

I'm not sure about the colouring - the screen I am using is not calibrated...

I lost space off the top when I used LightRoom to correct for the lens.

[Kyle]

I gave the photo another shot at editing but I can't seem to get the perspective correct. Also, there is some definition in the sky but I really have to push the highlights and exposure.
Richard, in your edit I find the stairs really look out of place. Trev's edit fixes this but the colours are off. How were you able to fix the perspective, was it in lightroom or photoshop?

This is where I've got it with some extra sharpening and also downsized. Also trying it without the stairs.

[Tronhard]

I gave the photo another shot at editing but I can't seem to get the perspective correct. Trev's edit fixes this but the colours are off.

Hi Kyle. I've had another go with a colour change - is this any closer? I did the perspective changes in Lightroom and the tonal changes in a combination of LR and PS...

[Mike Buckley]

Also, there is some definition in the sky but I really have to push the highlights and exposure.

My version was done using two very quick steps requiring about 15 seconds total. First, I adjusted the tone curve of the entire image. Second, I selected the sky and pulled the middle of the tone curve toward the bottom right corner of the graph. (The curve can be manually adjusted this way in LR but only for a global adjustment, not when adjusting a selected area of the image. Perhaps the same results can be achieved using the sliders when adjusting a selected area.)

I'm not advocating how much the sky should be changed. Instead, I'm making the point that if you want to add considerably more tonal variation to the sky, it can be done. Sometimes you just have to take control of those pixels, show them who's the boss, and vigorously push them around until they do what you want. Indeed, the sky could have been made far more dramatic.

[Manfred M]

You've been given some good advice so far. Another trick, if the sky is truly featureless and you can't bring things out the way Mike demonstrated, is to convert the image to B&W. A sky that looks unattractive due to lack of colour or tonal patterns can look quite acceptable as monochrome image. This works quite well with older buildings and gives them a bit of a "period look". If you don't like the coolness of pure B&W, a sepia tone gives you a monochrome image that is warmer.

[Donald]

...f the sky is truly featureless and you can't bring things out the way Mike demonstrated, is to convert the image to B&W. A sky that looks unattractive due to lack of colour or tonal patterns can look quite acceptable as monochrome image. This works quite well with older buildings and gives them a bit of a "period look".

Ach, he got in ahead of me!!

[Kyle]

Trev, that new edit looks much better in terms of the tones.
Mike, I tried playing with the tones and exposure in Lightroom. I was able to get a similar look to what you have (mine didn't have quite as much definition) but I found that it didn't really make the image look better since it brought out a bunch of noise and didn't look natural. This is exactly what you were explaining, it's possible to do but it may not be the best thing to do. Also, as you mentioned my changes were made globally. I know that I would have to bring the photo into photoshop to get the exact changes I would want.

Manfred, I'll give the image a try in B&W. That may work, especially if I cut out most of the foreground grass and stairs (which really show the perspective problems).

[rpcrowe]

How about this one then?

I'm not sure about the colouring - the screen I am using is not calibrated...

I lost space off the top when I used LightRoom to correct for the lens.

With a blank sky like this, it is easy to add a border across the top Image>Canvas Size>Canvas Extension Color: other and the use the eye dropper tool to select the sky color. That gives you some room to work with. Sometimes, you need to smooth out the transition between the old sky and the new sky by using the clone stamp tool at about 50% opacity and painting along the transition...