Crop the sky?

[Mike Buckley]

Andrew,

If you like Frank's treatment as much as I do, compare the histograms of your last image and his. Notice that his histogram goes all the way to the right side. That's only part of what makes his version so compelling, but it's an important part.

[AndrewMcD]

Frank - I am honored that you took the time to do the edit. You have absolutely nailed where I wanted to go with that image!

Mike - Yes, as you can see I am most impressed with what Frank has done. Now I have to sort out how to get his version into Lightroom so I can look at the histogram.

Thank you everybody for helping this thread along. I have learned a few things about photography and myself in this process!
Andrew

[Mike Buckley]

Now I have to sort out how to get his version into Lightroom so I can look at the histogram.

Right click his image. Select "Save Image As." Once you have downloaded it to your computer, import it into Lightroom.

[AndrewMcD]

Duh! (slap myself in the head) Thanks Mike, I should have known it is that easy.

[Kaye Leggett]

When I can't decide whether to crop or not, I increase the size of the image on screen so that I can move it about and view the cropped image without cropping (if that makes sense) to give me a better view.

The second image is best imho

[FrankMi]

Frank - I am honored that you took the time to do the edit. You have absolutely nailed where I wanted to go with that image!

Mike - Yes, as you can see I am most impressed with what Frank has done. Now I have to sort out how to get his version into Lightroom so I can look at the histogram.

Thank you everybody for helping this thread along. I have learned a few things about photography and myself in this process!
Andrew

If you are interested, Andrew, I could post the steps I used in Photoshop CS5 to get the image to this point. Most of the difference comes from applying a form of Local Contrast Enhancement. There is a tutorial https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...nhancement.htm available but I haven't tried doing this in Lightroom.

The neat thing about using layers in Photoshop is that you can control the amount of change, in this case the LCE on just the ice from 0% to 100% of the adjustment using the layer's Opacity slider. I left the LCE at 100% so that it would be obvious what was changed, but I would normally tone down the level applied to be more subtle. How much to apply is very much up to personal taste.

I also warmed the color temperature of the scene, except for the ice. For the Ice, I went the other way and cooled the color temperature.

As Mike mentioned, I also adjusted the overall tonal range to almost fill the histogram without clipping. I should have checked the White Balance but it looked fairly close so I didn't.

I hope this helps!

[AndrewMcD]

Frank,
I am beginning to develop some experience with Lightroom but I have none with Photoshop. I thought you had changed the color temp of the ice so it is nice to know that I'm correctly interpreting the changes that have been made. Your edits and information have been well appreciated. I will read the tutorial that you provided the link to and see if I can apply any of it to Lightroom.
Andrew