Nothing beats a good photo, but many of us know that Photoshop can improve on a poor image. Last week I went to Kings Park in Perth, it was a wet misty day and consequently a photo I took of the city skyline looks washed out and drab. With Photoshop I improved the look of the image with just a few mods and tweaks.
CTRL+L increased the contrast and reduced the density of the overall image slightly.
With the polygonal lasso tool (L) selected the city skyline then added a colour correction (add 5 Yellow) and reduced density slightly. The skyline is still bluish due to the haze, if corrected any more the city buildings loose their clarity and the colour balance becomes 'muddy'.
I wanted to bring out the colour on the autumn leaved trees running along the road in the mid foreground of the image. I used the edit in quick mask (Q) and 'painted' the autumn trees using a soft brush. Then I selected edit in standard mode, inverted the selection (SHIFT+CTRL+I) and increased the saturation to about 15.
I used the dodge tool on some of the trees on the RHS foreground.
Finished up by increasing the saturation of the whole image by 10 and finally a slight unsharp mask.
I hope this has been of some help and hasn't confused too many people {} Of course if I have taken a crap photo of The Perth skyline I could always go back and photograph it again. But when you go on an exotic holiday the weather doesn't always cooperate and you cant go back to do a re-shoot. you might not have any option but to make the best of mediocre images.
Excellent photo Mick and great tips. Another suggestion (at capture time) might be to take a shorter exposure so as not to overexpose the clouds (at least, they look it on this laptop) and then combine it with a longer exposure for the foreground.
Excellent photo Mick and great tips. Another suggestion (at capture time) might be to take a shorter exposure so as not to overexpose the clouds (at least, they look it on this laptop) and then combine it with a longer exposure for the foreground.
Well done!
I might try that; I took 3 different exposures of that scene (I used a tripod).
