Canberra Sunset

[jstp]

Taken from a hill in the Northern suburbs, a steep climb ending with socks full of prickles but well worth it. I have changed the colouring a bit, making a bit cooler. Any c&c welcome as always.

Cheers

[dje]

Hi Jason

I think this is potentially a very nice image. I just think you need to bring the shadows up a significant amount so that you can see some detail in the foreground. Hopefully you can try this yourself if you have software to do it. (I'm happy to show you what I mean if necessary). At the moment, to me this image is not quite a silhouette but on the other hand the foreground is too dark to make out the detail.

The blue-ish mountains in the distance and the sky have very nice colours IMO.

Cheers Dave

[jstp]

Thanks Dave,

Had a go at what you suggested, I understand what it is you are saying and I think I achieved the result. Here it is.

Cheers

[Bobobird]

The redo is much better.

[dje]

Jason that's the sort of thing I had in mind however in doing it I think you've lightened the sky and distant mountains and as a result they have lost a bit of their nice colour. How did you do the shadow enhancement?

I did a quick run in Photoshop Elements using the Shadow/Highlight control and came up with this. Shadows enhanced by 25%.



Cheers Dave

[jstp]

Hey Dave,
I used camera raw 6.5 in conjunction with Photoshop, I played around with the highlights and blacks, as well as brightness and contrast a bit. This program is fairly new to me, I am usually a Gimp/Ufraw user, but have made the change to try something different and I have heard there is a fair bit more control, which I am still learning.
Thanks Bobo for the comment.

Cheers

[dje]

Hey Dave,
I used camera raw 6.5 in conjunction with Photoshop, I played around with the highlights and blacks, as well as brightness and contrast a bit. This program is fairly new to me, I am usually a Gimp/Ufraw user, but have made the change to try something different and I have heard there is a fair bit more control, which I am still learning.
Thanks Bobo for the comment.

Cheers

Jason this is just my personal opinion but I've found the Shadow/Highlights control in PS more effective in bringing up the shadows than Fill Light in ACR because the former restricts the brightness increase to a lower range of tonal values. In theory though it is probably better to do shadow enhancement in ACR on the RAW image. Others may have other views however.

Cheers Dave

[jstp]

Dave, as I speak I am in the middle of playing around with another photo I took on the same day and have had a look at what you are talking about and thanks, I was not even aware of that in PS, and all I can say is that you are right. I am still editing the raw image in PS, after some initial adjustments in camera raw. I intend to put it up in the latest mini comp so you can check it out and let me know what you think if you like. Again many thanks for your advice, it is greatly appreciated and shows me how much there is to learn and how much more control I can have in PS.

Cheers