beach shot adjusting curves

[briandee]

I like it a bit more after the edit. was just curves adjustments.

before




after

[buddyboy]

I love the color in the edited one.. thanx for sharing

[Bianca.Tarleton]

definitely took a dreary day at the beach and turned it into something interesting! great job.

[slsphotos]

It did give it that extra pop- nice job

[tchudson]

My first thought was that the detail on the driftwood in the first pic was better than in the second. The detail in the sky in the second, however, is a lot better.

[jbm1991]

Nice edit The sky looks alot better, but some of the nice detail in the wood has been lost. I hope you don't mind but i had a go at editing it. If you like it then i'll happily post what i did to acheive it



Best wishes
John

[Vern]

Please tell us how you did it.

[briandee]

yes, yours is nice :> I like

Originally Posted by jbm1991

Nice edit The sky looks alot better, but some of the nice detail in the wood has been lost. I hope you don't mind but i had a go at editing it. If you like it then i'll happily post what i did to acheive it



Best wishes
John

[jbm1991]

Glad you both like it To do the edit i did the following:

1) I first removed the tree branch out of the top right corner of the image. I did this because it made adjusting the sky later on a bit easier than if I had left it there. To do this i just used the healing and spot healing brush tools.

2) I then used the method described here to enhance the image. (NOTE: I have the method described in that link set up as an "action" so i can just click the button and then adjust the resulting layers opacity. It is very rare that a photo does not benefit from that enhancement). I set the layer that you end up with in that tutorial to 42%.

3) I then removed the sky from the enhancement layer, so only the beach and log benefitted from the enhancement layer. I then using the same selection I used when removing the sky from the enhancement layer, copied the sky from the original photo (without the branch) onto its own layer.

(Note: At this point you should have 3 layers in the following order from top to bottom: The sky from the original photo, but with the branch in the top right corner removed as described in step 1; The enhancement layer from step 2, with the sky removed; and then the original image but without the branch in the top right corner)

4) On the sky layer I went to Image > Adjustments > Levels and slid the black slider to roughly 50, the white slider to about 240, and the grey slider to about 0.78. It's largely personal preference really.

And there you have the finished image

If I had more time to spend on the edit I would also consider cleaning the beach up a bit, around the log at least, as it quite easy with it being sand.

Thanks
John

[PrimeTime]

Lots more detail in this photo, that was overlooked..........

I'll let you know what i did later, don't have the time right now.