on the road

[Abby]

I shot this with my trusty point and shoot olympus camera in the afternoon this fall in Wisconsin. I like the dramatic effect of the photo. I am learning techniques in Photoshop that help out my photos to make them pop a little bit more since I am soooo limited on my camera.
But sometimes I don't know if it's too much or not. Unfortunatly I don't have the picture before the editing.
Please tell me what you think and what I can do to inprove, maybe with a point and shoot since I don't have the money yet to get a better camera. and or with photoshop.
thanks, Abby

[Amira]

You caught an absolutely lovely sky and the sun shining through is gorgeous. I love how it lights up the surrounding clouds. However what I don't like about this image is that nothing else is in focus. The foreground (rocks) immediately in front are out of focus, and the trees are very dark and you can't see any detail. I would have loved to see some lightness in the trees to brighten it up just a tad and then maybe have some of the rocks in the foreground in focus. Maybe even just a comabination of these if not all of them may improve it a little. But I do think the fact you captured this with a P&S with very little control over your settings is great!

[Mr. Clipit]

If you say your using photoshop, I would head over to image -> adjustments -> shadows & highlights. Moving those bars to the right should pull some detail out of the clouds and treeline. (I have CS3, I'm not sure how far back this feature goes) I got this out of the shot - its a low-res upload, there is finer detail in it.

[peeperita]

being shot at such a low angle, i think i would like to see what this image would have been like with a wider depth of field.......that's in camera advice....

out of camera thoughts?......well, depending on what version of photoshop you have, there are a variety of ways to bring up some of the detail in the tree line....either with the shadows and highlight tool in the cs line....or in levels or curves....

nice work....

peeper

[wulf]

I like the low angle, the out of focus immediate foreground which turns crisp a little way down the road and the fact that everything beyond that seems to be reasonably focused. I think think main weakness of the image is a that the treeline, which looks rich with colour, is underexposed and thus doesn't play to its full potential.

You can probably fix this by boosting the mid-tones (I would use the curves tool, position a point at the middle of the curve and pull it slightly upward). If that has too much effect on other areas (for example, the sky is already a bit overexposed in parts), you could do this on a separate layer and then blend the two.

Wulf

[albert.cantaloupe]

Nice application of the thirds rule...well almost. The picture is composed well over all, however, I feel it is missing something. The sky is very dramatic but the bush/tree on the far left and also the larger rock seems to very distracting. It makes me want to deviate my intention to it though it is neither eye candy or appealing. My advice to you is try to compose a picture that tells a story. Keep up the good work.

Happy New Years!!!

=)

[Abby]

Originally Posted by Mr. Clipit

If you say your using photoshop, I would head over to image -> adjustments -> shadows & highlights. Moving those bars to the right should pull some detail out of the clouds and treeline. (I have CS3, I'm not sure how far back this feature goes) I got this out of the shot - its a low-res upload, there is finer detail in it.

Thanks Mr.Clipit, I haven't used the shadow and highlight tool yet (and yes I have CS3), and thanks too Wulf for your feedback about using curves. I didn't use either for this picture and will play around and see what I can learn and get out of it. Thanks for all the feedback from everyone, it is really useful.

[Mr. Clipit]

Yup, i made my first post two days ago(?), and I've been raking in the knowledge so fast i should be paying tuition. the shadows & highlights tool is one of these newly learned tools, so pay it forward.