Arizona Landscape

jedithebomber · Oct 25, 2007

This is pretty typical of the landscapes around here, few clouds + harsh light. C&C welcomed.

I left this intentionally uncorrected (except for white balance). Any pointers on how to improve these harsh desert vistas would be appreciated. It seems whenever I improve an aspect another one degrades.

Edit:
BTW I have Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom at my disposal.

dkf10425 · Oct 26, 2007

What aspect degraded after you improved another? I duplicated the layer then used a plugin called mask pro to paint away the background leaving only the desert and distant mountains. Then I increased the saturation slightly. I then painted on a curves adjustment with a soft brush over the distant mountains to bring out a little more detail.

jedithebomber · Oct 28, 2007

That is definitely an improvement. My problem has been if I try to adjust the whole image, I cant get the sky and the ground and the mountain to look right. If I separate the ground and sky and adjust separately I seem to either loose detail in the horizon, or get a funky fake look. And the darkening of the sky as you move up the image, there I just have no clue.

I am trying to achieve a sky with slightly more blue, and a ground with slightly deeper greens. In the harsh sunlight, it seems all the great colors get washed out.

Skipping all this post processing, is there a good filter I can slap on the lens?

dkf10425 · Oct 28, 2007

Those plants appear to contain more yellows than greens so I would go to selective color and under "yellow" increase the yellow itself slightly. You can fix the darkening of the sky by using your dodge tool. Use a large soft brush, set the range to shadows and the exposure to about 7%. You will probably have to play around with it for a few minutes until you get what you like. If you get something that's good, take a snapshot and start over again. Then compare all your snapshots to see which one looks the best. After you have done that duplicate the layer and mask out the foreground leaving only the sky and clouds. Then you can use your magic wand to choose an area on the clouds. Play around with the tolerance, a good starting point might be 40-50 with contiguous unchecked. After you get a good selection on the clouds click select-inverse. Then make your color adjustment on the sky. I don't know anything about lens filters, I work with images on a daily basis, but I don't take pictures.