Amazing hidden detail in Digi Pics!

[Meysha]

Hi everyone!
I really really like this photo I took in Oban, Scotland a few months ago and I was in PS just mucking around trying to figure out what to do to it to make it better... and I wondered to myself - I wonder if the camera actually has any detail in the black area... and lo and behold..........

Here's the original

And here's the edited one with just levels change and masking of the sky.

Ok So it's really crap quality - but I was so surprised to even see this much detail... I mean that black is really black in the original!
Do you guys have any ideas on how I can make this 'hidden' data more presentable and decent? I've tried a bunch of different levels settings but maybe it's just not possible coz there isn't enough data.

Cheers,
Vicky

 

[mrsid99]

If you have Photoshop CS try shadows/highlights and see if that works any better.
Good luck!

 

[Digital Matt]

What you can do in the future is shoot two different exposures. One for the sky, and one for the foreground, and then combine them in PS. Or try using a grad neutral density filter on the lens.

 

[mal]

What you can do in the future is shoot two different exposures. One for the sky, and one for the foreground, and then combine them in PS.

I'd never thought of that. Good idea.

 

[walter23]

Yeah, although boosting the brightness of digital images too much is very noisy, you can recover detail from that end of the exposure more easily than from the bright end where detail gets completely lost as pixels become completely saturated.