Help me photoshop

Felix · 6 Aug 2007 at 19:31

Following a trip to the Swiss alps I have come back with loads of photos with the sky over exposed. Here is an example

Original photo Alps

It would be great if someone could photo shop this to try to improve it and tell me how they did it so I can have a go myself.

Thanks

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 6 Aug 2007 at 19:40

hmm Its always better to under than over expose but it could be made a little better. Nothing extreme though as the highlights are well and truly blown

Scam · 6 Aug 2007 at 20:01

I had a quick go. It really is a losing battle though. If you lower the levels even slightly it goes all purple and pixelated, so there's really no data in the highlights to go on. So i went a little mad and tried everything under the sun, hence i can't really remember it all

Anyhoo;

It looks daft but essentially i reduced the contrast by -50, then tried various ways of bringing what blue in the sky there was, out. Then i used masks of sorts to paint in some blue with blue filters etc.. It was still horribly pixelly so as you can see (lol) i used a quick mask and put some lens blur into the sky to hide it. Pretty lame but i had fun trying

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 6 Aug 2007 at 20:22

You'll want to take a photo of the sky and merge them together in the same image with plenty of corrections to make the image look authentic

Felix · 6 Aug 2007 at 20:32

Bit late now

Would a filter stopped this?

ethan · 6 Aug 2007 at 21:45

I would hand paint the sky back in. Maybe use one of the sky brushes available for photoshop and combine it with some of the methods suggested by Scam

ethan · 6 Aug 2007 at 21:47

A nd grad or polarizer would have helped.

InvaderGIR · 6 Aug 2007 at 22:26

Thought I'd have a quick go at this...

ORIGINAL

1)

This image just had the levels fiddled with, which brings out the clouds, but the ground is a little dark now...how to fix...

To fix this all I had to do was remove the mountain in the background, adjust the levels of the foreground area and put the mountain back...and I think it's worked well in this image...

2)

This is easily possible due to the fact it is almost two images, the foreground area is in greens, and the background area has a haze of clouds over it, so it's easy to cut them in two.

InvG

Felix · 6 Aug 2007 at 22:53

Thanks. I will have a play.

Its quite embarrasing as there is me with my 350D and take photos like these where as my friends who had a point and shoot have better photos than me

GeX · 7 Aug 2007 at 00:05

thats cos u were pointing and shooting with a DSLR... nawty!

xolotl · 7 Aug 2007 at 00:14

Looks like it was in AV mode which isn't really P&S. But ISO 400? Surely you didn't need that. You need to learn what all the functions do and how to process shots from an SLR to truly get good photos out of them.

ChroniC · 7 Aug 2007 at 01:14

Heres one for the auto levels gang.

Felix · 7 Aug 2007 at 07:57

xolotl said:
Looks like it was in AV mode which isn't really P&S. But ISO 400? Surely you didn't need that. You need to learn what all the functions do and how to process shots from an SLR to truly get good photos out of them.

I increased the ISO because I wasnt getting very sharp photos also the day before the light wasn't very good.

I never realised before getting a DSLR that I would have to process them.

InvaderGIR · 7 Aug 2007 at 09:13

ChroniC said:
Heres one for the auto levels gang.

piccie

Yes, but it isn't the original image

Whilst not great/good, mine is leveling of the original image.

InvG

ChroniC · 7 Aug 2007 at 11:38

InvaderGIR said:
Yes, but it isn't the original image

Whilst not great/good, mine is leveling of the original image.

InvG

No point flogging a dead horse.

ethan · 7 Aug 2007 at 12:15

ChroniC said:
Heres one for the auto levels gang.

Very good I would just add a little tone or grey to the sky

Unless I am seeing things there is a little water stain type of mark to the right of the picture just above the other cloud sweeping over the other mountain. It looks out of place tbh.

ChroniC · 7 Aug 2007 at 12:30

ethan said:
Very good I would just add a little tone or grey to the sky Unless I am seeing things there is a little water stain type of mark to the right of the picture just above the other cloud sweeping over the other mountain. It looks out of place tbh.

fixed, grey tone.

ethan · 7 Aug 2007 at 12:36

Looks quite nice!

Felix · 7 Aug 2007 at 13:08

ChroniC how did you do that!

The stain on the top right is dust or a smear on the lens

ChroniC · 7 Aug 2007 at 13:21

I dont like to reveal my secrets to much but its basically a section of a photo i took, overlayed onto the original. Blended to 50%, then carefully using 100% rubber removing the bits over the mountains, blend back to 100% opacity and you have a sky over mountains, use around 10% rubber to erase/blend the edges of sky and mountain. Then using the dodge and burn tools to sort out the tones. Bit of selective colour balance to remove the blue from the snow, and some saturation.

Simplest way is normally the best way.

Felix said:
ChroniC how did you do that!

The stain on the top right is dust or a smear on the lens

I think thats part of my merged picture, dont worry.

Help me photoshop

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