PP edits, C&C please

[exemplaria]

A tree near my house. Not looking for C&C on the photos themselves, just on the difference between SOOC and edited. RAW editing done in ViewNX2, adjustments in PS. I'm photographing this tree each season with the goal of getting each of the 4 and presenting them together. Therefore, I'm really going for a "fall" look here. I wish the tree would cooperate a little better in terms of turning colors before losing leaves, it looks like this is as good as I'm going to get. The reason I like this tree (and have selected this composure) is that 99.9% of people who look at this tree can't believe I'm able to get this photo - it's in the middle of an office park, surrounded by roads, buildings and other trees. This is the sole angle where I can get the "nothing else in frame" look. If you click through to my flickr page, you can also see my "blue tree" (summer) example. Thanks.

SOOC, RAW converted to JPEG with no adjustments


fall tree sooc by exemplaria, on Flickr

Edited:


fall tree_002 by exemplaria, on Flickr

 

[Rick58]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking but I see red in your edited sky which is producing a purplish tint

 

[Heitz]

I think I like the SOOC version better than the edited. That said, I think it needs a curves adjustment. But I like its potential!

 

[Ysarex]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking but I see red in your edited sky which is producing a purplish tint

Yep, the sky isn't that color. It isn't the color of the SOOC version either, but the SOOC version is a lot closer to correct. Rick is right that you've shifted the color toward purple.

Joe

 

[exemplaria]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking but I see red in your edited sky which is producing a purplish tint

Yep, the sky isn't that color. It isn't the color of the SOOC version either, but the SOOC version is a lot closer to correct. Rick is right that you've shifted the color toward purple.

Joe

This is exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for, thanks. Most of the sky adjustments were through saturation, increasing both the overall and blue levels, and slightly decreasing the cyan. Curves are the adjustment tool I understand the least, I'll often futz with them to change the picture and like the result, but I don't really understand what I'm doing.

 

[Rick58]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking but I see red in your edited sky which is producing a purplish tint

Yep, the sky isn't that color. It isn't the color of the SOOC version either, but the SOOC version is a lot closer to correct. Rick is right that you've shifted the color toward purple.

Joe

This is exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for, thanks. Most of the sky adjustments were through saturation, increasing both the overall and blue levels, and slightly decreasing the cyan. Curves are the adjustment tool I understand the least, I'll often futz with them to change the picture and like the result, but I don't really understand what I'm doing.

Welcome to the club
I really wish I could grasp how to read histograms, but it just doesn't sink in. When I see a histogram, I see a chart without vertical or lateral information to make it useful OR I see it could be the outline of the photo itself with no reference to the meaning of the high and lows. The problem is, I know neither of these are correct and I just can't get my head around it.

 

[Ysarex]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking but I see red in your edited sky which is producing a purplish tint

Yep, the sky isn't that color. It isn't the color of the SOOC version either, but the SOOC version is a lot closer to correct. Rick is right that you've shifted the color toward purple.

Joe

This is exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for, thanks. Most of the sky adjustments were through saturation, increasing both the overall and blue levels, and slightly decreasing the cyan. Curves are the adjustment tool I understand the least, I'll often futz with them to change the picture and like the result, but I don't really understand what I'm doing.

You have your edit tag set to Not OK. If you change that I'll be happy to take your SOOC version and adjust it for you and tell you what I did.

Joe

 

[exemplaria]

Go for it.

 

[Ysarex]

Go for it.

I don't use Capture NX but if it's at all standardized you should have color adjustments for temp (yellow/blue) and tint (magenta/green). I opened your photo in Photoshop and it had an obvious magenta tint over the entire image. One reason I knew this was the sky color. In the sRGB colorspace a clear blue sky will vary only slightly around an average value of H=210. Your SOOC sky was up in the low 220s; that doesn't occur naturally here on earth. Green is desaturated by magenta and I could also see that the grass and what was left of green leaves on the trees were hurting for some color.

So I removed magenta until I got an appropriate sky color. As I did the greens improved as well. I don't know what color the brown leaves really were but I'd probably shift them a smidge more orange. I see them as too red but I left them alone. This is either a morning or evening photo in which the sun is warming up and shifting red the color of the tree and leaves.

Joe

 

[Rick58]

Nice job

 

[KmH]

Photoshop has Camera Raw, which is a Raw converter. (ACR - Adobe Camera Raw)
Raw converters use different algorithms so you may get more pleasing Raw conversion results using Camera Raw instead of View NX.

However, you don't say which version of Photoshop you have. The Camera Raw version in Elements is de-featured, and only has about 40% of the capability Camera Raw in Photoshop CS(x) has.

Also Photoshop Lightroom's Develop module is also ACR. So by having Photoshop you have some, or virtually all of the Raw conversion and editing capability Lightroom has. Camera Raw was developed long before Lightroom.

 

[exemplaria]

I have CS4, but I'm not sure the latest ACR update that works with CS4 has support for the D3100.