I feel like there is something missing with these.

[HeidiMartinez]

Posts and rocks and grasses can all make good foreground elements, but one of the challenges is to make them look 1) interesting and 2)logically placed. Wide-angle lenses make close objects appear large, and make distance seem greater, which leads to distant objects that lack physical size on the sensor, and lack visual weight.

it is challenging to learn how to "see" the ay a camera lens sees. These are basically, shot from too far away, with too short of a lens focal length, to make the foreground objects BIG, and also interesting. Same goes for the mid-distance and the most-distant parts of the scenes.

I would experiment with lens focal length; Try going to longer lens focal lengths.

With this lens, you need to be much physically closer to the foreground objects, to make them render physically BIGGER; this is the basic issue with all of these...focal length and camera-to-subject distance, neither of which are optimal to make really interesting, compelling "views".

I completely agree with this. I was using the kit lens when these were taken (18-55 nikkor) and some of these were extremely cropped in. (composition was a lot worse as I was distracted with shooting manual for the first time.) I have a nice wide angle (10-24 nikkor) and will definitely take this along next time I go out and try experimenting. Thank you!

 

[HeidiMartinez]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

 

[Ysarex]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

 

[HeidiMartinez]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

 

[Tim Tucker]

I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

No, I actually scaled back the contrast and don't hold with the saturation slider.

I'll leave you in @Ysarex's capable hands but mainly what I did would've been as follows:

1. Calibrated my screen.
2. Corrected the WB first, if you don't then you're really just enhancing any colour cast.
3. Not move the sliders as far as you did. You had: Highlights -100; Whites -100, which reduces your whites and highlights to mid-grey.

Really all I did was move the sliders back a touch and remove the colour cast.

 

[HeidiMartinez]

I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

No, I actually scaled back the contrast and don't hold with the saturation slider.

I'll leave you in @Ysarex's capable hands but mainly what I did would've been as follows:

1. Calibrated my screen.
2. Corrected the WB first, if you don't then you're really just enhancing any colour cast.
3. Not move the sliders as far as you did. You had: Highlights -100; Whites -100, which reduces your whites and highlights to mid-grey.

Really all I did was move the sliders back a touch and remove the colour cast.

Wow ok. So simple but such a difference. I am guessing colour cast is white balance? And I do need to buy a screen calibrator. I am using a macbook with retina screen and I have had to go back several times to make the images brighter because they seem so bright on screen. Thanks again for the great advice!

 

[Ysarex]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

Hi Heidi,

That Dropbox file is a JPEG. We can process that, but we can do a lot better if you have an NEF file. The JPEGs you posted at the top of the thread suggest that you shot the originals and saved the raw files (NEF). It's possible that when you loaded everything into LR you had LR convert the NEFs to DNGs. In that case there should be a DNG file around which is also a raw file -- hopefully NEF or DNG.

Here's a basic run through of that file processing the JPEG:

I altered the WB first and warmed the color.

I increased the exposure .4. Then I set white and black points. Do you know how to do that using the alt/option key. Hold down the key and when you go to drag the White slider the screen will turn black. Anything clipped will show as a color or white. Adjust until all diffuse highlights do not show. Reverse with black.

Then I cropped the photo. And next I used the gradient tool to lay two gradients over the photo.

The gradients darken the image -- the goal was to darken both the sky and the foreground but leave the middle section with the structures alone.

After applying the gradient I had to reset the white and black points. I wound up with +68 white and -40 black. The goal is not to clip diffuse highlight and on the other end to just barely reach black -- but reach it.

I reduced the highlights to -70 and left the shadows at 0.

I set the contrast to +30 and the clarity to +15.

Now if you can find that NEF or DNG file I can do a much better job.

Joe

 

[HeidiMartinez]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

Hi Heidi,

That Dropbox file is a JPEG. We can process that, but we can do a lot better if you have an NEF file. The JPEGs you posted at the top of the thread suggest that you shot the originals and saved the raw files (NEF). It's possible that when you loaded everything into LR you had LR convert the NEFs to DNGs. In that case there should be a DNG file around which is also a raw file -- hopefully NEF or DNG.

Here's a basic run through of that file processing the JPEG:

View attachment 130240

I altered the WB first and warmed the color.

I increased the exposure .4. Then I set white and black points. Do you know how to do that using the alt/option key. Hold down the key and when you go to drag the White slider the screen will turn black. Anything clipped will show as a color or white. Adjust until all diffuse highlights do not show. Reverse with black.

Then I cropped the photo. And next I used the gradient tool to lay two gradients over the photo.

View attachment 130241

The gradients darken the image -- the goal was to darken both the sky and the foreground but leave the middle section with the structures alone.

After applying the gradient I had to reset the white and black points. I wound up with +68 white and -40 black. The goal is not to clip diffuse highlight and on the other end to just barely reach black -- but reach it.

I reduced the highlights to -70 and left the shadows at 0.

I set the contrast to +30 and the clarity to +15.

Now if you can find that NEF or DNG file I can do a much better job.

Joe

Oh sorry about that, I dragged the image directly off my card and I guess my laptop converted it. I will re-upload to dropbox and send you the link again. It already looks awesome with what you did already. Thank you!!

 

[Ysarex]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

Hi Heidi,

That Dropbox file is a JPEG. We can process that, but we can do a lot better if you have an NEF file. The JPEGs you posted at the top of the thread suggest that you shot the originals and saved the raw files (NEF). It's possible that when you loaded everything into LR you had LR convert the NEFs to DNGs. In that case there should be a DNG file around which is also a raw file -- hopefully NEF or DNG.

Here's a basic run through of that file processing the JPEG:

View attachment 130240

I altered the WB first and warmed the color.

I increased the exposure .4. Then I set white and black points. Do you know how to do that using the alt/option key. Hold down the key and when you go to drag the White slider the screen will turn black. Anything clipped will show as a color or white. Adjust until all diffuse highlights do not show. Reverse with black.

Then I cropped the photo. And next I used the gradient tool to lay two gradients over the photo.

View attachment 130241

The gradients darken the image -- the goal was to darken both the sky and the foreground but leave the middle section with the structures alone.

After applying the gradient I had to reset the white and black points. I wound up with +68 white and -40 black. The goal is not to clip diffuse highlight and on the other end to just barely reach black -- but reach it.

I reduced the highlights to -70 and left the shadows at 0.

I set the contrast to +30 and the clarity to +15.

Now if you can find that NEF or DNG file I can do a much better job.

Joe

Oh sorry about that, I dragged the image directly off my card and I guess my laptop converted it. I will re-upload to dropbox and send you the link again. It already looks awesome with what you did already. Thank you!!

OK -- got the NEF. Hang on and I'll be back soon.

Joe

 

[HeidiMartinez]

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

I'll concentrate on the processing, with an example. You're tone-mapping far too much, and what this does is equalise the tones and greys the colours. Which makes them all look the same. Whereas what you want is contrast, or difference between colour and tone. It is the difference that produces the contrasting elements, makes things bright, colourful, etc. I have literally taken 5 minutes to scale back the raw processing and enhance the colour a little, (I also selected the worst offender ):

View attachment 130234

I! LOVE! THIS!!! I struggled to much with this image especially to make it pop. It just looks so flat. If you don't mind, how did you achieve this? Just by boosting contrast and saturation? I could not figure out how to achieve this! I use lightroom btw. Thank you so much for taking the time to show me that!!

Do you save and edit raw files or do you work with camera JPEG files?

Joe

edit: Got that -- looks like you're saving NEF files and processing those in LR.

Set up a free Dropbox account and you can upload an NEF file -- happy to walk you through the processing.

That would be great!! I pm'd a dropbox link. Thank you!!

Hi Heidi,

That Dropbox file is a JPEG. We can process that, but we can do a lot better if you have an NEF file. The JPEGs you posted at the top of the thread suggest that you shot the originals and saved the raw files (NEF). It's possible that when you loaded everything into LR you had LR convert the NEFs to DNGs. In that case there should be a DNG file around which is also a raw file -- hopefully NEF or DNG.

Here's a basic run through of that file processing the JPEG:

View attachment 130240

I altered the WB first and warmed the color.

I increased the exposure .4. Then I set white and black points. Do you know how to do that using the alt/option key. Hold down the key and when you go to drag the White slider the screen will turn black. Anything clipped will show as a color or white. Adjust until all diffuse highlights do not show. Reverse with black.

Then I cropped the photo. And next I used the gradient tool to lay two gradients over the photo.

View attachment 130241

The gradients darken the image -- the goal was to darken both the sky and the foreground but leave the middle section with the structures alone.

After applying the gradient I had to reset the white and black points. I wound up with +68 white and -40 black. The goal is not to clip diffuse highlight and on the other end to just barely reach black -- but reach it.

I reduced the highlights to -70 and left the shadows at 0.

I set the contrast to +30 and the clarity to +15.

Now if you can find that NEF or DNG file I can do a much better job.

Joe

Oh sorry about that, I dragged the image directly off my card and I guess my laptop converted it. I will re-upload to dropbox and send you the link again. It already looks awesome with what you did already. Thank you!!

OK -- got the NEF. Hang on and I'll be back soon.

Joe

Can't wait!!

 

[Piccell]

Lower the brightness of the display until it is more lifelike than it currently is.

 

[HeidiMartinez]

Lower the brightness of the display until it is more lifelike than it currently is.

I definitely need one of those screen calibrators.

 

[Ysarex]

Can't wait!!

Dropbox - DSC_8763.xmp

That's a link to the file DSC_8763.xmp. LR will read an XMP file. If you place your NEF file with the same name (DSC_8763.NEF) and this XMP file together in the same folder then when LR opens your file it will read the XMP and show you everything that I did.

Above are histograms of your processed version of that photo (top) and mine (bottom). They tell you the problem with your file and it's precisely what Tim pointed out. Your images lack normal contrast. A normal contrast photo will have a histogram that extends corner to corner; your's falls substantially short of the right corner (whites).

Your not setting and maintaining white and black points in the photos. You're also pushing too hard with the processing -- the lake wasn't blue and your attempt to make it blue shows. Another guy who hangs out here, Sparky, says; "if it's obvious you did it then you over did it." Sparky's right.

You took the photo with the camera set to auto white balance. AWB usually gets you in the ballpark but never does get the ball to home plate. Your camera's AWB was off a little to the blue/cyan direction. If you load that XMP file you'll see I set temp to 5950 and tint to +8.

The biggest difference you see between the two files is the contrast difference. My version has blacker blacks and whiter whites and that shows throughout the photo. Look right across the lake at the shadows cast by the trees and notice how they're darker in my version. Compare the sky at the horizon and my version is much lighter. I darkened the sky too (used a gradient) but I also made sure the photo didn't lose it's white point.

Set white and black periodically as you work -- set them and reset them. Hold the option/alt key down and click on the white slider. The screen turns black. Move the slider to the right until color shows. Determine that the color showing is diffuse highlights (not reflections) and then move the slider just until the color is gone and stop: white point. Then the same with black. This time the screen turns white. Move the slider until you see just the beginning of black appear. This is different than white. You want to reach black so the goal is to find the spot where black just starts to show up and stop. Make other processing changes then reset the white and black points. Last thing you do when the photo is finished: recheck the white and black points.

Joe

 

[Ysarex]

Lower the brightness of the display until it is more lifelike than it currently is.

I definitely need one of those screen calibrators.

On sale: https://www.amazon.com/X-Rite-CMUNS...&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=colormunki+smile&psc=1

 

[HeidiMartinez]

Can't wait!!

Dropbox - DSC_8763.xmp

That's a link to the file DSC_8763.xmp. LR will read an XMP file. If you place your NEF file with the same name (DSC_8763.NEF) and this XMP file together in the same folder then when LR opens your file it will read the XMP and show you everything that I did.

View attachment 130244

Above are histograms of your processed version of that photo (top) and mine (bottom). They tell you the problem with your file and it's precisely what Tim pointed out. Your images lack normal contrast. A normal contrast photo will have a histogram that extends corner to corner; your's falls substantially short of the right corner (whites).

Your not setting and maintaining white and black points in the photos. You're also pushing too hard with the processing -- the lake wasn't blue and your attempt to make it blue shows. Another guy who hangs out here, Sparky, says; "if it's obvious you did it then you over did it." Sparky's right.

View attachment 130247
You took the photo with the camera set to auto white balance. AWB usually gets you in the ballpark but never does get the ball to home plate. Your camera's AWB was off a little to the blue/cyan direction. If you load that XMP file you'll see I set temp to 5950 and tint to +8.

The biggest difference you see between the two files is the contrast difference. My version has blacker blacks and whiter whites and that shows throughout the photo. Look right across the lake at the shadows cast by the trees and notice how they're darker in my version. Compare the sky at the horizon and my version is much lighter. I darkened the sky too (used a gradient) but I also made sure the photo didn't lose it's white point.

Set white and black periodically as you work -- set them and reset them. Hold the option/alt key down and click on the white slider. The screen turns black. Move the slider to the right until color shows. Determine that the color showing is diffuse highlights (not reflections) and then move the slider just until the color is gone and stop: white point. Then the same with black. This time the screen turns white. Move the slider until you see just the beginning of black appear. This is different than white. You want to reach black so the goal is to find the spot where black just starts to show up and stop. Make other processing changes then reset the white and black points. Last thing you do when the photo is finished: recheck the white and black points.

Joe

Just got through viewing it in lightroom and it looks so much better. The one I did looks like lightroom threw up on it lol. Yours looks so natural and clean. Setting the white and black points made the image so much more dynamic and other than my abuse of the saturation slider, I think that is what was making my images so flat (lack of dynamic range.) And yes I have been in the habit of leaving the WB in auto. I will experiment with that next time I am out. After this, I will be resetting a lot of my images and re-editing them. I will post one or two to here when I finish them. I can't thank you enough for this information. I was not expecting it and have learned so much. I hope that when I become a lot more experienced, I can somehow return the favor. Again Thank You!!!