San Juan Fall

[Bill Randall]

Canon 5D 17-40mm @ 17mm, f/13, 1/25 Near West Mancos Overlook San Juan Mts. CO

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Liked the variety of autumn colours in this image. And also the 'V' shape formed by the green pine (?) trees.
Looks a tad over sharpened to me & a bit high on contrast too. May be due to my uncalibrated monitor...

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Bill,
My monitor is calibrated.....so Kaushik did very well with his assesment on the PP comments. I really like the comp......as the V makes a nice compositional element nicely balanced with the aspens on the left and the distant ones. I will suggest Robert's reverse S curve.....http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20434...to tame some of the contrast. You may want to check out the other tonal tweaks also while you are there in part 2.
I may also clone out some of the pine needles on the right edge of the frame if you are so inclined.....if you aren't into such things.........I feel a crop will work also.

[Bill Randall]

Tried reverse curve and some other tweaks and a crop

[Robert Amoruso]

Bill,

Just wanted to show you a reverse s-curve I tried along with a reduction in saturation or the yellows and increase in the reds. Also did a highlight selections (CTRL ALT ~), copied to layer (CTRL J), Blending Mode to Multiply, opacity to 65%. Curve I used show with image.

[Chris Starbuck]

did a highlight selections (CTRL ALT ~)
Robert,
I've seen you refer to this several times. I have CS4 on a WinXP machine, and CTRL ALT ~ doesn't do anything. I also can't find any menu item to do a highlight selection. Is there something I need to set up in preferences or some other dialog?

[Robert Amoruso]

Chris (and Bill too),

Yes I just had this problem this weekend on a new laptop I purchased. Strange and I am still trying to figure it out. See my thread at http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?p=161168 for details on making this selection. Method 1 is the one I mention, but method two using the channels palette gets you that same selection and will work.

When i figure out the reason the CTRL ALT ~ does not work, I will update my how to file in the Educational Resources forum. Thanks for asking.

[Chris Starbuck]

Robert,
After a quick look at your Method 2, I realized CS4 has changed the channel pallete keyboard shortcuts! The RGB channel is now CTRL+2 instead of CTRL+~. And CTRL ALT 2 appears to select the highlights.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Bill,
I think Robert's version was a big improvement on the contrast. The crop you made also works for me. Any way you look at it ........the comp is very nice.