washed out panorama, what can i do to fix it?

[katia]

hey there DPSers, today i went on a biiiiiiiiiiig, tiring hike, and took a whole bunch of pictures and stitched them together with Hugin. i tried a bit of PPing, mostly curves and contrast adjustments. everything i do it to seems to make it all too dark, or too light. this really is the most amazing view and i want to have an amazing pano to show that. i would really like to have the sky a bit bluer, but unfortunately every SINGLE camera store i have visited in the last few months have been completely out of 67mm polarizing filters. any simple photoshop tips i can try to get this to really pop? i guess i will post a small version that links back to the original on flickr, since it's about 9000 pixels+, and the limit is 800



thanks to anyone who provides tips, also feel free to edit & repost here.

[WVCoalMiner]

WOW That is AMAZING. I downloaded the original size from your Flickr and it is AWESOME!!!!
I am messing with it and I'll post it back here with anything I can do to it.

[katia]

thanks a lot, i'm really lucky to live where i do, it's one of the most amazing places on earth! and thanks for playin' with it, i'm excited to see what you've done with it!

[WVCoalMiner]

Heck just from the picture I WANT to go see it in person LOL

[katia]

hey denja, thanks for that! it definitely pops more, but maybe a bit too much, i think it looks a little over-saturated, but still very pretty! however, your privacy settings on flickr say this photo is private, so i cannot see the larger version.

[katia]

oh darn, sorry guys i accidentally deleted the original picture, but i played around with it a bit more and came up with something a bit better; i will post the original again



and here is the edited version, what do you guys think?

[katia]

yes! lovely denja, what steps did you use to get this?

[WVCoalMiner]

I am still waiting for the 1MB file to upload to Photobucket LOL.
Katia, take the image in PS then click on IMAGE in your toolbar and highlight the MODE and select LAB COLOR. Then Click on IMAGE again and click APPLY IMAGE and then set the opacity to however you like it. Then go back and Change your setting from LAB COLOR back to RGB and you have a color POPPED image.nTry it on your original and see the difference.

[vsa]

I prefer working with curves and do stuff manually but in this case even going "image -> adjustments -> equalize" and then desaturating it a bit works quite well.

[katia]

wow, thanks everyone, i didn't know there were SO many methods of doing this one thing! i will keep coming back to this thread as a reference! i have a copy of the picture i amhappy with now, but i can't even remember what method i used to do it! thanks