Drop of Gold

[alenz]

[kerbechard]

I like the shot. You were at the right place at the right time to see a beautiful sunburst, and getting a picture of it is always a plus.

The biggest thing I see right off is the saturation. The images is washed out. The darkest pixels aren't very deep.

There are two ways to fix this. The first is when you're taking the shot. you want to lower your exposure. The camera is set to a very sensitive level here, so you get a lot of bright areas, and your darks come out very faded. If you have the option, shoot scenes like this with a faster shutter speed, smaller aperature, or a combination of both.

The second way to fix this image is with a simple Levels adjustment. If you're in photoshop, the levels adjustment will alter the way the lightest (white) and darkest (black) areas interact. By moving the black slider (the one on the far left) further towards the middle, you will re-balance the image.

The wavy shape above the sliders shows the spread of darkest to lightest pixels in the image. If that wave doesn't come all the way to the left (as in this picture) then that means the darkest pixel in this image isn't black, and, therefore, not properly exposed. By moving the black slider over, you can change what the darkest pixel looks like, and alter the other pixels at the same time.

The levels adjustment on this image brings out the rich gold, brown and burnished copper colors of the scene. Give it a shot.

[clockdoc]

Nice job! This would work well with some text as a poster-size image.

[alenz]

I was smiling when I read the comment from kerberchard in that I take photos and at times I
I say to myself...self there was a time when there wasn't Photoshop...I would've been either pleased with this shot or not...either way today I have
the option to go in and bump up the saturation of my photos or not. Tweaking
photos has been a hard thing for me in that the possibilities are endless.
sometimes I question whether it's sort of cheating.
taken intentionally or not...either saturated or not works for me.

Thanks for the suggestions see results:

[Mike49]

Great adjustment resulting in a great photo...if it were mine, I'd frame that bad boy!

I don't see Photoshop adjustments as "cheating"....if I didn't have PS to fix my awful picture-taking, I probably wouldn't be taking pictures.

[alenz]

I was smiling when I read the comment from kerberchard in that I take photos and at times I
I say to myself...self there was a time when there wasn't Photoshop...I would've been either pleased with this shot or not...either way today I have
the option to go in and bump up the saturation of my photos or not. Tweaking
photos has been a hard thing for me in that the possibilities are endless.
sometimes I question whether it's sort of cheating.
taken intentionally or not...either saturated or not works for me.

Thanks for the suggestions see results:

[Bateryman1970]

For some reason I cant see the adjusted image it says it is no longer available

I like the original shot but it is too light and need darkening a touch and perhaps adding in a bit more red in the levels.

Did you shoot this in RAW?

[peeperita]

the edit is a big improvement over the original.....and probably more what your eye saw when you took it.....

thanks for sharing

peeper

[alenz]

Did not shoot in raw.....

sorry I had accidentally removed ''viewing priveleges...