House in New Mexico

[questor886]

Ok folks what can I do to improve this shot? There were scattered clouds dumping little bits of rain here and there and generally messing with the light.


Make: NIKON CORPORATION
Model: NIKON D60
Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
F Number: F/8.0
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 100

[OsmosisStudios]

There's very little contrast in the scene: my guess would be the processing. The left side of the sky is grey: Did you use the "recovery" slider in RAW? The building is also showing some oversharpening/glowing on the roof: it's over done.

Can you show a "unprocessed" version?

[fletch]

Like OS said its lacking in contrast. Did you use fill light as well as recovery in RAW to develop? This will have the effecect of compresing the dynamic range of the photo into a very small area. Try playing with the contrast or 'blacks' slider. Also you appear to have a halo from something around the roof of the house. Maybe from sharpening or some kind of selective editing.

[questor886]

Yeah I noticed the Halo from editing. I went back to the raw image and worked on it some more, this is much closer, but I'm still learning to use Elements 7.

Thanks for the comments, everyone helps me learn that much more, and yes the sky was dark in the area behind the house. Small rain showers were scattered all over the area.

[OsmosisStudios]

Its still not contrasted enough for my liking, and the halo on the roof is still very present. I think you're gonna have to accept that you're losing the clouds/sky detail on the left and some of the shadow detail on the building itself.

[vandergus]

One trick I find useful for lightening shadows while still keeping them contrasty is to first increase the "fill light" slider then increase the "blacks" slider (in Camera RAW). You'll probably have to overdo the fill light a little bit at first, then when you bring the blacks up it should lower the overall brightness and give you good contrast in the house.

Just something else to try.

Another trick for locally increasing contrast while leaving the overall contrast unchanged is to use a large radius unsharp mask. It should help bring out the ruddiness in the siding of the building. Here's a little tutorial on how to do that.

Local Contrast Enhancement