Scarlet Tide

[Don Lacy]

I really struggled with this one I most have worked on it for two weeks never satisfied with what I was getting. My first attempt was a horizontal image that I ended up deleting because I was not satisfied with the comp. So I started working on the vertical images I made on my first attempt I could never get the color right in the water with the blends I spent two days with that one before trashing it and going back to the Raw files. For this version I chose a different foreground image to blend and I was finally almost happy with it. Whats so frustrating is this is a once in a couple year sky and I just cant seem to get all the elements to come together to do the moment justice. This is where I am at right now would like to hear any thoughts

6D, 16-35 f/4 IS at 16mm

[Don Railton]

Hi Don

Love that cloud, especially top LH corner. amazing. The big rock LH side looks great, but I can see why you would have started with the image wider because it looks a bit cropped off from the RHS to me. Is the Rock RH border able to be isolated from the border?? that was the first thing I thought I wanted to see. the gold sun streak in the sea also looks a bit smoothed but I think a long shutter has been used. Love your work..

DON

[subramanya_ck]

Beautiful image. love those colors

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Don very nice one with stunning colors , i like the comp with the great sky and the FG rocks . How about a bit more punch in the mid tones ?
TFS Andreas

[Ian McHenry]

Hi Don
Excellent composition and sky colour.
To me the FG looks a wee bit overcooked.
I have made a slight reduction in whole image saturation for your consideration.
Here is the result.
Cheers: Ian Mc

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Don, I really like this comp, very nice work as usual. I think I prefer Ian's repost with the slight desaturation applied. I love the rays of the sun in the clouds, but not crazy on the bright blown-out slivers in the sky near the horizon, but those are easily fixed.

[dankearl]

I like this Don, although it has a bit of HDR look to me.
The FG and the clouds look good, I can see why you struggled with the water, it still looks a bit over processed to me..

[Don Lacy]

Thanks guys, The water and sky are pretty close to what I was seeing I remember turning around to face that direction and the first thing I saw was the ocean blood red and yellow from the reflected light and being in awe of the colors I was seeing which makes me reluctant to tone them down.

but not crazy on the bright blown-out slivers in the sky near the horizon

I am hurt that you think I would post an image with blown highlights just checked them in PS and the brightest reading was 225 in the red channel they were not blown in the raw file and I kept toning them down during processing but they do look bright here

[Diane Miller]

This does look like a difficult one to process. I opened both the OP and Ian's RP in PS and layered them and they are identical. The RP, however, doesn't have an embedded profile. In response to the message from PS on opening that it doesn't have a profile, I told PS to assign sRGB, which is probably the correct situation -- that it was converted and just not tagged.

I wouldn't resort to desaturation, but a different initial camera profile might give a different starting point worth considering, along with tweaking white balance. It looks like there may be a slight color cast in the FG that could be dealt with and still keep the dramatic colors. It might work well to do a separate conversion for the sky. Although it should be low in contrast, a color cast seems to be causing a noticeable issue there. I'd have a look at the sky at a brighter exposure. The colors don't have the purity I'd expect.

This is a stunning image and I'd love to see where you end up with it!

[Morkel Erasmus]

Lovely light and scene indeed!
Regarding the colours - yes I think the orange and red channels may be clipping and leading to a loss of detail...
Regarding the "blown highlights" in the sky just above the horizon - I think they were clipped/blown out initially and then over-corrected in RAW, hence the look they are currently sporting despite showing values of 225...

[Don Lacy]

Lovely light and scene indeed!
Regarding the colours - yes I think the orange and red channels may be clipping and leading to a loss of detail...
Regarding the "blown highlights" in the sky just above the horizon - I think they were clipped/blown out initially and then over-corrected in RAW, hence the look they are currently sporting despite showing values of 225...

Thanks everyone for your input I will rework the image to correct for the color cast I left it as a artistic decision I allready corrected it in my master file but reduced the opacity of that layer to reintroduce some of it back into the image. I will also look at the bright sky that area was not clipped during capture but somewhere in the conversion from the Pro color space to sRGB and downsizing the image for web viewing I lost it. When I checked the values in my reply I did it off of the master file.

[Don Lacy]

Here is the revised version with a the color correction on the foreground and additional attention paid to the highlights in the sky.

[Ian McHenry]

Hi Don
Really like the foreground rocks detail and beautiful naturalness of all the background colours.
Great work.
Cheers: Ian Mc