Ice arch

[John Chardine]

One of the most beautiful icebergs I've ever seen. Outside Lemaire Channel, Antarctica.

I cropped a little off top and bottom and added a hint of Color Efex 4 Detail extractor (first preset toned down to 25% opacity).

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM, @ 25 mm
Program: Manual
ISO 100, 1/800s, f/7.1

[Roman Kurywczak]

Pretty awesome John! Looks like Delicate Arch but on water! I like the tones and shades of blue as well. Only minor suggestion would be to see if you could eeek out any more detail on the RH base of the arch.....but overall.....very nicely done!

[Roger Clark]

Hi John,

Beautiful! I agree with Roman's comments. I wonder if brightening the bottom (reflection) would help an already high impact image?

[Linda Dulak]

John: I saw this photo on the blog. This is beautiful with such a nice reflection!

Linda

[Rachel Hollander]

John - I can only echo the above, this is beautiful and extremely well done. Love the colors. It will be interesting to see if the suggestions above can improve what is already a great image. Just curious as to how big this iceberg is?

TFS,
Rachel

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi John that is truly lovely, great image.

However I am in total agree with Roman, there is truck loads of detail in the shot crying to come out and do your image justice. I can't replicate the colours as the image has no tagged profile and so I'm a little cornered, but as you can see from the web image there is certainly much more detail to come out, hope you on't mind. If you can afford the time, please revisit the image, this is a real belter of an image and just needs some gentle coaxing.

This is from a web image with little info, I can't imagine what the RAW would look like, AWESOME.

Steve

[John Chardine]

Thanks everyone. Some great suggestions. I'll go back to the image and have a "play". Perhaps I should send to Roger as a candidate for RAW image processing. Thanks for the repost Steve. It certainly gives me an idea of what is possible.

[Steve Kaluski]

John, this has so many possibilities.

[Robert Amoruso]

John,

Stellar image. I agree that local contrast needs to be amp'ed up to expose the hidden details. Steve did a good job - many other directions possible.

If you have Nik CEP, try detail enhancer. Local Contrast Enhancement using USM another option.

[Mark Wiseman]

Hi John,
A really beautiful image that you have captured. Steve's changes have shown what potential you have with the post processing of the RAW image with regards to potential detail.
Thanks for sharing and best wishes,
Mark.

[John Chardine]

Thanks again to all.

As mentioned in the OP I did use Nik CE4 Detail enhancer but only the most subtle preset and then toned down to 25% opacity for that layer. My goal was a slightly enhanced version of what I saw. I'll continue playing!!!!!

[Anette Mossbacher]

Beautiful image John, love it. Wonder how it looks with all the details come out. Great

Ciao
Anette

[Steve Kaluski]

John, FYI I rarely use NIK stuff, this is just simply channels & curves and trying to keep as much of the original structure. Personally I would work through using Smart Objects and adjustments and avoid too many third party stuff, keep the image as natural as possible.

[Jerry van Dijk]

One of the most beautiful images icebergs I've ever seen! The diagonals of the clouds really make the image for me. I do appreciate the details brought up by Steve, but I find his version too blue and a tad bit too dark. Somewhere in between would be killer.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Jerry I totally agree, however as I mention in my reply, if the file did not have an untagged profile then colour shift isn't an issue, but heres hoping to see a RP from John soon.

[Norm Dulak]

Terrific image, John. But while I agree that more detail might be brought out, I think your OP is more true to nature. Whatever you do, please keep the delicate, more subtle colors.

[Don Railton]

Wow... and Steves repost is WOW...

Absolutely beautiful..

DON

[Andrew Aveley]

Epic photograph with awesome suggestions to bring out the detail.

Enjoy the festive season !

[John Chardine]

Hi Jerry I totally agree, however as I mention in my reply, if the file did not have an untagged profile then colour shift isn't an issue, but heres hoping to see a RP from John soon.

Hi Steve- I will repost!!!! But in the meantime, what do you mean by the file having an "untagged profile".

[Rachel Hollander]

John - your file doesn't have an embedded color profile so the colors shift from what you are seeing in PS when displayed on the web. You want to convert to sRGB and make sure the profile is embedded for the best results on the web.

Rachel

[John Chardine]

Thanks Rachel. I hadn't realised that checkbox in Save for Web and Devices had been unchecked.

[Steve Kaluski]

John, that is what everyone misses and what I eluded to in my reply.

It's always best to use Convert to Profile under Edit in PS (check you have the right settings there), then in Save for Web ensure Optimise, Embed colour profile and Convert to sRGB are all checked. If unclear drop me a line. This ensures that the image are displayed to their best and there is NO colour shift with web browsers.

[Arthur Morris]

John, FYI I rarely use NIK stuff, this is just simply channels & curves and trying to keep as much of the original structure. Personally I would work through using Smart Objects and adjustments and avoid too many third party stuff, keep the image as natural as possible.

Hey Steve, I will disagree here. Used judiciously, NIK Tonal Contrast and Details Extractor (both from Color Efex Pro 4) can vastly improve a wide variety of images quickly and leave them looking quite natural, at least in my opinion .

[Arthur Morris]

Certainly a unique and striking berg. From where I sit I like the original post but feel that it could be strengthened immeasurably with a crop from the left to the center of the little white mountain and a smaller crop off the right to just outside the dome shape, making sure to leave a border around the dome. In other words, a very small crop from our right.

[Steve Kaluski]

I stand corrected Artie.

[Arthur Morris]

I stand corrected Artie.

indeed! As with all things related to Photoshop, the biggest problem is with over-doing new toys. When I look at images from my first digital trip to Africa I wince. Having come from Velvia to digital and learning about Hue/Saturation I really overdid things especially with the greens. For a way cool example of Detail Extractor see the BPN thread here.

[Don Lacy]

John, What a wonderful image love the colors,textures, and detail. I hope you dont mind but I thought all this image needed was touch of tonal contrast so I did it the old fashion way in PS with a USM setting since this darken the image slightly a did a curve adjustment to lighten it back up and used a layer mask to even out the brighter tonal areas on the berg.

[Shawn Zierman]

Remarkable image. An image that makes me want to be there.
Love your composition.

[John Chardine]

Thank you for all the great comments. I'll try a small crop from the right and some tonality changes, however, on that score I doubt I can improve on what people have presented here (thanks Don for the latest repost). I'll have a go anyway.

[Morkel Erasmus]

So sorry that I'm late to this one, John.
Can't add much to what's been said already. Stunning, stunning image... love it!
Ditto on bringing out more details, something which the reposts did well.

Wish this was mine.
Have a great New Year's celebration

[Don Lacy]

Thank you for all the great comments. I'll try a small crop from the right and some tonality changes, however, on that score I doubt I can improve on what people have presented here (thanks Don for the latest repost). I'll have a go anyway.

John, I used an old PS trick from before NIK came out with CEP 4 and Tonal contrast just go to unsharp mask and put the following values in 10 for amount 60 for radius and 0 for threshold do it on a separate layer and you can fine tune it with the opacity slider or use a mask if you want to selective apply thew effect. Amazing image would love to see it printed on Fuji Pearl of Kodak metallic paper.

[James Fuller]

Killer reflection and beautiful colors.