Another HDR scenic

[Joel_W]

Got out late yesterday afternoon, and came across a path in a nature preserve that I thought would work well with HDR imaging. As my usual approach, I tried to edit the HDR image to a realistic looking photograph.

There isn't any tilt issue, as the path runs across the grain of a hill. You can tell that by the fact that the trees aren't tilted, but just about completely vertical.

I wasn't completely happy with the results, so I did the final editing of the path, sky and it's gradation, and some tree barks in Nikon Capture NX 2.3.1 Am I getting any closer to my goal then the last attempt?

View attachment 9259

 

[vipgraphx]

Joel very nice scene! Processing is good and the thing that you need to work on is the blue sky. It looks natural at the start but, when you start to move up you can see the sky get very blue especially in taht middle left area of the top and it ruins the rest of the picture.

After looking at for a bit the trail looks like it has to much green/yellow hue in it. Not sure if that looks natural to me since you are going for a natural look.

Everything else looks good.

 

[Joel_W]

Joel very nice scene! Processing is good and the thing that you need to work on is the blue sky. It looks natural at the start but, when you start to move up you can see the sky get very blue especially in taht middle left area of the top and it ruins the rest of the picture.

After looking at for a bit the trail looks like it has to much green/yellow hue in it. Not sure if that looks natural to me since you are going for a natural look.

Everything else looks good.

VIP, thanks for the CC. The original sky was so light that I decided to darken the color using Capture NX2. I'll go back and decrease the color sum. As for the path, I increased the browns, but didn't add any yellow. You can see in real life that the newer chips are brown, while the older ones turn a darkish gray, I just tried to go more for the newish chip look.

 

[GeorgieGirl]

I'd like to see again when the cobalt is out of the sky.

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

I like the scene and the color palette. I can't see any visible sharpness in the leaves, they look pretty muddy. Did you de-ghost that area? Even a slight breeze can compromise the resulting HDR if not properly de-ghosted.

 

[Joel_W]

Here's the redue of the the cobalt blue sky.

 

[Bynx]

I think your saturation is still too much. Here is my take on it. The sky I removed the black and some magenta from the sky and just made overall image slightly less vivid.

 

[vipgraphx]

Bynx nice edit and Joel same to you.

I went in a bit of a different direction, I added some global warmth to the image. I pushed some yellow and reds as you can see in the trees. I removed some green in the grass. I also removed so magenta and black in the blue of the sky but add some cyan. On the path I removed some of the green hue. I also added a high pass sharpening.

Once again my edit will be more warmth in color as that is what my eyes are attracted to. I just tried to push some of the existing colors that were already there.

Result.

 

[Bynx]

I prefer my sky, but I like the warmth youve added. It makes my overall take on it too much on the bluish side.

 

[Joel_W]

VIP & Bynx. I really like both of your edits compared to mine. Out of all of them, I like Bynx's 2nd edit the best. What I'm taking away from this is that I over edited, and over staturated both the sky, path, and the little something I added to the grass. Looked pretty good to me until I saw how both of you handled it. In the further I need to keep what I edit on the conservative side. Thanks to both of you for the effort and time you put into the edits.