Montreal "Oratory" church

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Very nice, but I the lines where you did the seperate adjustments on the sky are just a bit obvious. I like the composition and coloring though....

I really like this perspective, and the dark, cloudy sky. What is happening in the right bottom corner? It seems a little unclear and somewhat distracting.

Thanks for the critiques... not sure I can see the "lines" on my screen. Although, I would assume most people would make separate adjustments for the sky.. . unless they have a super camera :) Is it just that the edges are too sharp around the bulding?

 

What's your technique for handling this?

Here is another version.. I'm curious if you can see the "lines" in that one:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4094413

Hi Etan ... "Lines" was probably too strong a phrase; I was, of course, referring to the sharp edges of the building. I do feel that they are distracting in this (otherwise quite nice) photo and make the building look a bit "pasted in." When I go back and look at it closely, it's quite well done, but still discernable. BTW, I'm no expert and often experience the same problem (as a quick look at some of the pictures in the Spain folder of my portfolio will show). I assume what you did was make a selection of the sky and do a separate levels or curves adjustment on it. If you didn't feather the slection edge, you can try that. The number of pixels you would use is pretty dependent upon the size of the picture you are working on. Also, be sure to view the picture at a very lasrge size and correct the selection, pixel by pixel if necessary (although your selections seems to be pretty good here). More often I find, it becomes more prevelant the darker I make the sky and I wind up with a choice between that "pasted on" look or not getting the sky quite as dark as I would like. In that case, I usually back off and live with a lighter sky. Again, I'm no expert ... just trying to give some more useful feedback than just saying "nice photo" all the time.

Actually that's not even close to how I go about darkening the sky... I'm pretty sure you are being distracted simply by over unsharp-masking of the final image... making the edges of the building too unrealistic. Maybe I'll have to tone that down.

 

My technique is merely using several layers, changing brightness and contrast (amongst a few other things), and clumsily separating the sky using a VERY soft eraser brush.

 

Did you check out the other image pasted in my above comment?

 

Thanks again for the input... it is priceless getting feedback like this.

 

I really enjoy some of your spain pics especially the black and white Leon one. The only one I can tell where the sky really looks out of place is "Zamora", mainly because of the white halo around the edges of the building.

 

It's a tough trick!

Hi Etan ... yes, I did check out the other photo, the edge effect is much less prominent there. I prefer this shot of the two, though. Thanks for your comments. I like that Leon photo also. That one was rough because I did darken the sky a bit, but there were a lot of branches, windows, signs, etc. to deal with. The ones I was thinking of that were dodgy were the Salamanca shots. As far as the Zamora shot(if you mean the one with the man in the narrow street; I mislabelled one), I didn't do anything, oddly enough. It was shot straight into the sun and the sky got completely blown out. I like the composition, but the colors were shot.

Hello Etan,

The buildin itself is captured nicely. The perspective however is way off, more than could be accepted. I'd correct the perspective in PS. By doing so, you lose part of the image, therefore, you'd have to step back when taking the image to account for your image lose.

I find the snow orwhatever is going on on the lower right, distracting. The clouds look fine, except for the fact that the color saturation you did, is kind of obvious, patches of different colors are seeping through. It is also blown out in the lower left corner.

If you want to treat and tweak the sky and the building separately, you may also give this a try, tweek the building and duplicate the image. treat and tweak the sky and then brush or clone it on your duplicate.

I hope you don't mind me speaking what I think.

best regards.