New to RAW/Lightroom

[Kenneth Walker]

Too "punchy"? I've come to an early conclusion that small adjustments are the best...I didn't do much here, and feel I may have gone too far.

 

[jaomul]

Looks vibrant. Maybe decrease the saturation a very small bit might make it more natural

 

[jcdeboever]

Nice landscape. agree with jaomul.

 

[Photosensitive]

Sooo beautiful...

 

[weepete]

Just in the blue of the sky, the rest of the shot looks fine to me. I'd be tempted to try a graduated filter on it to even out the colour a bit too. If that didn't work a little desaturation of the blue channel in the HSL panel its what I'd look to.

 

[xDarek]

Amazing.You did a good job.The reflection in the water is so awsome!

 

[Kenneth Walker]

Weepete....ta muchly; the blue of the sky is down to the graduated filter...just overdoing it slightly, I'll carry on playing around, bound to find the right approach.

 

[KmH]

If you're interested in some expert advice:
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop (2nd Edition)

 

[Kenneth Walker]

Thanks KmH ...that link didn't work. I've got a couple of books on the subject, but I find I can't actually learn unless I'm doing....I find either trial and error works best for me (what I was doing here) or video tutorial (those CDs on photo magazines..digital photo seems best here in the UK). Some Youtube clips are helpful, though a lot seem to be more about the maker/presenter than the subject I'm interested in.

 

[minicoop1985]

You have the option in Lightroom to adjust the saturation of each color channel individually. Shouldn't be much of an issue to fix the sky alone.

 

[KmH]

Thanks KmH ...that link didn't work. I've got a couple of books on the subject, but I find I can't actually learn unless I'm doing....I find either trial and error works best for me (what I was doing here) or video tutorial (those CDs on photo magazines..digital photo seems best here in the UK). Some Youtube clips are helpful, though a lot seem to be more about the maker/presenter than the subject I'm interested in.

The link works now.
But copy and pasting the text "
"The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop
in a search engine would still get you to it.

If you really want to know about LR, get:
Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers, 2015 Release

Using your methods pretty much guarantees you'll only ever just scratch the surface of what LR is capable of doing.

 

[SaugaPhotoGuy]

My advice to you is to start collecting presets. There are many people who give away free presets and you can get some pretty cheap preset packs. So when you start to edit an image, just click on a bunch of presets until you find one that you like. Then you can make adjustments from there.

Making just small adjustments is one way to go... but most of the time I'm making pretty dramatic adjustments. It's really rare that I'll take a picture that doesn't need much adjustments. Maybe as I become a better photographer, I wont need to process my photos as much... but at this point, using some presets can make average photos look a lot better.

Taking the photo is only half the work. The other half of the work is the processing.

 

[Kenneth Walker]

Thanks everyone.

 

[Kenneth Walker]

I've been messing about with a plugin on elements 14...starting in Lightroom and exporting 3 jpegs of the image with the exposures tweaked up and down..an HDR I like the way the trees now stand out.

 

[Ysarex]

I've been messing about with a plugin on elements 14...starting in Lightroom and exporting 3 jpegs of the image with the exposures tweaked up and down..an HDR I like the way the trees now stand out.

View attachment 115516

That's very much improved from the original that you posted.

Joe