An Attempt at an HDR

[dustinpedley]

I posted this in the beginner section Sunday but i thought i might get a little better response here.

I wasn't going for a way overdone HDR something a little more natural looking

How can i improve these?

Thanks in advance

 

[*mithrandir]

Both appear a bit soft. You might want to used a fixed aperture of f/16 for all of your shots? Did you use a tripod? If it was windy, the trees are going to look soft (blurred).

 

[manaheim]

Looks a bit washed out.

 

[Opher]

Try to boost the contrast a bit.

 

[AdamBomb]

Try to boost the contrast a bit.

Now the rock and clouds are blown.

My attempt:

 

[Opher]

My attempt:

Much better

 

[AdamBomb]

Basically I played around with the levels, sharpened, and did some burn/dodging

 

[|)\/8]

Your photos look kind of flat, they need a contrast boost. Here is a quick 5 min edit (maybe a little overdone, but you will get the point). I ran a high pass filter on it and adjusted the contrast and played with curves a little.

 

[pez]

Here's one with channel add/subtract layers and curves.

 

[McNugget801]

I could do a much better job if I had the RAW files used to create this image. Here is my end result after doing a bit of tonemapping in Photomatix and touch up work in LR2.