Spring Sunrise

[kap55]

Have been spending time looking through older photos and found this from last spring. C&C welcome.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[IzzieK]

A bit too busy for my eyes...too many things to look at. The cloud down the water attracts my attention more than the one above I think...the view is beautiful but it needs a bit of work on PP...but what do I know...???

[Geoff F]

Yes, I agree with Izzie.

Reflections which are 'too good' and equally match the real thing are often over complicated and distracting.

In this case I think I would try a slight crop from bottom and right.

[Mark von Kanel]

A trifle over done for me Brian any chance of seeing the original ?

[Shadowman]

There's definitely some movement captured in the reflections and that gives it a nice vibrancy which counters the smoothness of the actual sky.

[GBO25]

I quite like it, such a relaxing scene. To me it looks a little HDR but I've never been in Canada in the springtime so maybe that's what it looks like. Nice shot.

[kap55]

Thanks for all the feedback. I think I'm more likely to tone down the reflection rather than recrop to eliminate it.

A trifle over done for me Brian any chance of seeing the original ?

Here it is Mark - but it is a 3 shot merge.

[DanK]

I like the scene, but I agree with Mark that the first one is overdone. Oversaturated, for my taste, which is a common problem with HDR tonemapping. The original that you posted second needs some added punch, but I would try to do that more with tonal adjustments, with at most a modest boost of vibrance.

I played a bit with this, but I don't know whether you allow editing by others, so I am not posting what I did. However, as an example, I did just a few things to your second one:

1. I used a curves layer to bring up the black point, which gives it more pop, and to brighten the midtones. The latter I did by pulling the curve up at the midpoint. Because I used a normal blend mode, this also increased saturation a bit in the lower half of the tonal range. (Change to luminosity blending mode and you can see the difference.)

2. I then added a vibrance layer, set to +35.

Those two edits are probably not enough, but they show one way to increase pop in an image like this without the distortions of tone mapping.

BTW, because of this, I almost never use HDR. I use exposure fusion. To see a comparison, go here.

[IzzieK]

I wish Brian will allow you to post your edit. I really like the scene a lot and would like to see an improvement to this scenery.

[kap55]

I like the scene, but I agree with Mark that the first one is overdone. Oversaturated, for my taste, which is a common problem with HDR tonemapping. The original that you posted second needs some added punch, but I would try to do that more with tonal adjustments, with at most a modest boost of vibrance.

I played a bit with this, but I don't know whether you allow editing by others, so I am not posting what I did. However, as an example, I did just a few things to your second one:

1. I used a curves layer to bring up the black point, which gives it more pop, and to brighten the midtones. The latter I did by pulling the curve up at the midpoint. Because I used a normal blend mode, this also increased saturation a bit in the lower half of the tonal range. (Change to luminosity blending mode and you can see the difference.)

2. I then added a vibrance layer, set to +35.

Those two edits are probably not enough, but they show one way to increase pop in an image like this without the distortions of tone mapping.

BTW, because of this, I almost never use HDR. I use exposure fusion. To see a comparison, go here.

I don't mind if you post yours Dan - thanks for asking.

Just to be clear the second photo is the HDR - the first is what I did to it in Photoshop. I either use exposure fusion or minimal tonemapping when I merge photos. In my opinion the HDR merge of 3 photos (which resulted the second photo) does not have any oversaturation problems. The first one is oversaturated, but I think that may be compounded by a vignette, which definitely affected the blue sky.

[Mark von Kanel]

Now thats interesting! id have laid money that the first was tone mapped, im looking forward to dans edit to see what hes come up with but i prefer the second version Brian and i think youve done well to merg them and keep the detail in the water.

[DanK]

Now thats interesting! id have laid money that the first was tone mapped, im looking forward to dans edit to see what hes come up with but i prefer the second version Brian and i think youve done well to merg them and keep the detail in the water.

Me too. That may make my edit less useful. In any case, I will post it below. I am not suggesting that it is a good, complete edit. I just wanted to illustrate what I meant by increasing pop without so much saturation. Hope it is helpful.

[kap55]

Me too. That may make my edit less useful. In any case, I will post it below. I am not suggesting that it is a good, complete edit. I just wanted to illustrate what I meant by increasing pop without so much saturation. Hope it is helpful.

Thanks for taking the time to do that Dan.

It's interesting (but not surprising) that both you and Mark thought the first photo was the HDR - it seems to happen a lot to my photos. I use the HDR technique to merge multiple shots, but I do that to obtain as natural a photo as possible. Sometimes I use tonemapping sometimes fusion. I then take that image into PS and that's when I do things that some people object to, but I do that for a reason. Many of my images end up being printed on canvas and they are much better received with the processing
than without. The "over the top processing" looks much better printed than it does on a monitor.

[Mark von Kanel]

Thanks for taking the time to do that Dan.

It's interesting (but not surprising) that both you and Mark thought the first photo was the HDR - it seems to happen a lot to my photos. I use the HDR technique to merge multiple shots, but I do that to obtain as natural a photo as possible. Sometimes I use tonemapping sometimes fusion. I then take that image into PS and that's when I do things that some people object to, but I do that for a reason. Many of my images end up being printed on canvas and they are much better received with the processing
than without. The "over the top processing" looks much better printed than it does on a monitor.

This has happened to me in the past a perfectly good image when printed on a luster or pearl and dull as ditch water if done on canvas... so over process to get it to look good on the canvas.... nice lesson thanks Brian.