leontina (170) 2010-12-19 02:30:08

Only a small correction to the horison line....

Alain (302) 2010-11-14 09:25:10

I often forget to do that ... to straighten the horizon or in this case the river.

jtkitty (392) 2009-08-16 11:24:40

This is a photo from a slide original so I am a bit nervous about the grain when sharpening. Here I have applied the Sharpen filter. I have tried Sharpen More, Sharpen Edges, and the Unsharp Mask. I really don't know what I am doing with the Unsharp Mask and the other two looked terrible with white areas pixelating into the photo. Is there a way to "smooth" the photo (i.e. remove the grain) before sharpening it? Or am I missing something regarding the Unsharp Mask? Any suggestions? Thank you so much!!

-T

Asiulus (1184) 2009-08-12 23:08:30

I looked at the original. I don't think it was necessary to make such aggresive PP. You can't do anything about really deep shadow in the snake's head. I didn't change much, mostly sky.
-I duplicated layer, made curves correction (more on highlights side) to darken the sky. In the result, the halo around the edges wasn't that bad. I also made colour balance correction for highlights, because the clouds were a bit purple. Then I ereased the rest of the sky layer to reveal the bottom with the building.
I increased saturation (+15).
The result is bit colder than your photoshopped version, but I think it looks more natural.
I'm sure many people would be able to do it better, but I did my best ;-)
I hope you like it.

jtkitty (392) 2009-08-12 06:05:12

Here is the original file. The colors have been corrected slightly and the contrast increased slightly. To achieve the original posted photo, I reduced the shadows and sharpened the image after resizing it for TE. My goal was to draw the snake head out a bit more.

vjmite (6514) 2008-01-27 22:53:13

I used Photoshop here. First I applied an unsharp mask (not the sharpening tool, but making a duplicate layer which is a blurred negative of the original) using the colour burn option to merge the two images, which darkened the background and sky, adding depth to the clouds. Then I used a second unsharp mask with the overlay option to merge the two, which lightened up the darkest areas. Then I smoothed out some noise in the sky. Then I reduced the redness in the clouds, which was emphasised by all the trickery I had applied. Then I selected the sky and saturated the blues, which were washed out in the original.

rushfan2112 (2965) 2007-12-26 01:47:36

- increased contrast slightly in brighter areas
- used highlight / shadow tool to bring detail into shadow areas
- increased exposure by about 1/5th of a stop
- tiny amount of smart sharpen