How to make the Sun rays stand out?

[precious]

Hello all,

I have taken some shots at a sunrise, and the pics rather turned out dull. The view was spectacular with Sun behind the clouds and the rays peeking out. But, I haven't been able to get that on my camera right. I'm having hard time enhancing the colors.

I have been trying to keep the color temp. to a bit cool, only make the Sun / Sun rays look more orange or have a glow. But, it turned out either over saturated or too bright and the foreground looks pixelated.

Any advise on how to go about making the pics pop out?

I only have used Canon's EOS sw for basic fixes, still learning GIMP.

Thankyou very much.

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[teaking]

One easy way I know to make colours pop a little is to duplicate the image above the original se its layer mode to overpay and then move the opacity slider down till you get an effect you like.

Then on the original layer open the brightness and contrast tool and move the sliders how you like, same with hue and saturation. Or you can use the Curves tool for this process and then use the hue and saturation tool.

Let us know how it all gets on

[Dima]

sorry, i dont know how to use gimp, but maybe it will help you a little, give you nan idea or something, so im gonna explain in photoshop..
1)open ur image, and duplicate the layer by right clicking the layer on the layers pallette and click duplicate , so u have 2 identical layers.
2)Lighten the upper layer in any way, by adding contrast or levels (in PS: image>adjustment>curves, then drag the line upwards.)

Now u have the normal layer beneat and the bright layer above it.

3)now erase everything in the bright layer except for the sunrays. So u can play around with this layer and adding a glow and whatsoever and still keep the rest of the image well exposed

so now ur sunrays and brighter than the rest of the image..

Good luck

[precious]

teaking, Dima, thankyou for your detailed explanations. I appreciate it.

Blur - I have tried the blur layer and did not seem to work for this picture. Guess its because I want the tree/mountains to still be light and showing while boosting contrast only in uppper portion of pic.

photoshop - will try it. I am wondering how to erase everything but the rays, since the rays are not very defined ..as in one single shape for me to select with lasso tool? what am I missing?

Thanks again.

[teaking]

If at all possible I wouldnt erase I would use a layer mask on the layer that way only certain parts will show. In gimp there is a quick mask function that lets you paint on areat you want to select if you do this on the layer mask you can make quick selections and paint to the layer mask that way you can control the effect with the opacity slider and also go back to the orignal as nothings been deleted.