California coastal mountains - help needed!

[Prinkster]

Howdy, I just got back from a vacation to the gorgeous California, and I had the opportunity to take a few nice landscape photographs. However, none of them turned out quite how I hoped. Take, for example, this one:



I know my composition isn't perfect, so if you've got comments about that I would appreciate it, but what really bothers me is the overall look and feel is just really grainy and unprofessional looking. I tried to follow the advice of the website here on landscapes, such as having a high apeture and such, but it just didn't come out looking how I wanted. Can anyone make any comments about the "technique" of the photograph? I'm sporting a Nikon D50 and a tripod, so I know it's not my gear that's at fault here.

Also, the photo fails to capture the awesome colors that came from it being sunset. Any ideas on how to get richer, deeper colors?

[higabyte]

a good trick i've picked up for sunsets and setting your white balance to the cloud setting and it will give you a deep orange glow...

here is an example I took with the cloud w/b turned on. being in iraq, having the dusty sky probably helped warm up the image a little more than if you had clear sky but maybe this method will work for you??

http://traceyhigginbotham.com/images...D/dsc_0684.jpg

[purplepixie]

Hi Prinkster

I think your image is a bit underexposed. I've taken the liberty of making a very simple correction to the exposure (using levels in photoshop). Hope you don't mind

Keep shooting

[NaturesPixel]

I had a play with it.... here is my attempt at trying to get the colours back



I took it into my trial of adobe's Lightroom and upped the exposure then moved over to paint shop pro and saturated the colours... and applied a graduated grey layer mask to place the affect of using a neutral density filter...


when i had my nikon D50 i used these setting to get the vibrant colours... or at least help retain some of them... most times ive had to saturate the image also when post processing ...

To do this I go to MENU > Shooting Menu (camera icon) > Optimize Image > Custom > (set Saturation to + and Color Mode to IIIa) > - - Done > OK. If you forget to select "- - Done" and hit OK it won't remember these settings!

[purplepixie]

Wow NaturesPixel, that makes quite the difference. Prinster: just ignore my post

[Saralonde]

Well done, N.P.

[Prinkster]

Thanks a bunch for your comments! NP, you really did an awesome job touching it up. I'm wondering how photographs also get that "glossy" kind of feel when taken with digital cameras - is that some special work in photoshop?

And thanks, Highabyte - I never even knew I could do custom corrections like that. I'll have to play around with it a bit, but thanks a bunch!

[mikem12188]

Great job Leisa!!!

[NaturesPixel]

Originally Posted by Prinkster

Thanks a bunch for your comments! NP, you really did an awesome job touching it up. I'm wondering how photographs also get that "glossy" kind of feel when taken with digital cameras - is that some special work in photoshop?

hmm glossy??
show me what you mean and i might be able to explain... or at least play with a photo see if i cant replicate it

but alot of what you see is photoshop.. specially these days ...

just take a look at this....http://www.topleftpixel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=239
99% of the time everyone's photo come out bland in colour its up to you to learn how to make them stand out



Thanks to everyone for the comments

[Prinkster]

Thanks for the help! Maybe I should learn to use Photoshop better, then...