In northern California recently where fall won't hit until november if at all. Found this little touch, though. Used Simplify 4, darkened the background, cloned a few spots to clarify leaf edges.
Theme: A Little Fall
In northern California recently where fall won't hit until november if at all. Found this little touch, though. Used Simplify 4, darkened the background, cloned a few spots to clarify leaf edges.
Although I like what you captured, the tree trunk is so dominant in size, position, and brightness that it overpowers the rest of the image. A wide range of effects could be achieved with what you captured, but it sounds like you want to feature the Fall colors. If that's so, I'd selectively increase the saturation of the colors in the foreground and background and back off the brightness of the white in the trunk. Here's my attempt . . .
Thanks for your comments and work, Dennis. Originally, I had liked the contrast of the white vs the leaves but did feel the whites were a bit blown. Did you use selective color when addressing the whites? I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as you did, but like the general approach. Will play with it a bit.
I actually addressed the whites on two different layers. (I still have Photoshop open, haven't deleted what I'd done, and I've developed the habit of giving layers meaningful names. They're meaningful to me, at least.) First, I took your image into the Camera Raw Filter, where I mostly played around with saturation and, probably, luminance. The only thing I did, then, to the whites was to move the Highlights slider to the left to darken them some. In a subsequent layer, I did use Select>Color Range on the whites and darkened them with the midtones slider in Levels. I use Select>Color Range fairly often for building masks.
Thanks for the details. Will work on it
Hazel, I particularly like the diagonally oriented cluster of leaves. I agree with Dennis concerning the dominance of the trunk and its brightness. I have cropped the image in an attempt to reduce the trunk and accentuate the leaves.
Hazel, I like the composition, the background, and the detail / colors of the leaves. I think I prefer Dennis's increased detail in the trunk.
Hazel, I like your capture and really like Gary's crop. I think toning down the whites on the trunk is a good idea - maybe half way between the OP and Dennis' repost?
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reworked it. Didn't go quite as dark as Dennis, but think I got more of the trunk so that it does not jump out. I really appreciate all your input.
I really like this image, Hazel. I think this is a good case for masking -- I would only darken the brightest area of the trunk. First, I'd bring down the highlights as much as practical in ACR. Then in PS I'd go to quick mask mode (Q key), take a brush of the right size and hardness and draw a mask on the bight areas.
Hit Q again and that becomes a selection. (You will need to do Select > Inverse unless you have changed the quick mask default so the brushed areas are the selected ones, not the protected ones.)
Then make a Curves (or your favorite) adjustment layer and the selection becomes a mask. Darken away. Click the adjustment eyeball off and on and if the mask isn't perfect, you can paint to adjust it. (Here it darkened the leaves too much.)
Here's the mask with the adjustment painted over on the leaves. Hit the backslash to see the mask as you paint right on the image with the brush -- but click on the mask icon on the layer, not the image icon, or you will be painting on the image itself. The leaves could be selected more precisely with the Quick Selection tool.
Final result. Would be better with more detail revealed in the whites in raw conversion, if the exposure wasn't blown out too far.
Thanks for the walk through. I will apply this as an improvement and as a learning experience. Using masks has always been a bit of a mystery for me. I've read a lot about it but still feel a novice. This is very clear and I'll work on it.
It's a great technique that I find useful on almost every image. Here is a little more thought-out (I hope!) presentation:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...uick-Mask-Mode
Masks are so simple and flexible.
Good comments above. I like the darkened trunk as presented by Dennis, as well as the cropped version (but I'd darken the trunk.
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