Wisconsin

I'm also trying to self-teach a little bit about PS-ing to tweak colors, levels, brightness, saturation, etc. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears!! :-)

I like this one, specially the green color. Good definition too.

I am working on composition skills. I know that I ought not to have

cut off that tree at the top (!!), and I wish I had used a filter to

darken the blue in the sky. I would also like to hear about anything

that I might have done with PS better. Thanks in advance for any

ratings and comments!!

You said it yourself..tree...sky exposure...PS..IAm sure that some will be able to help you , PK .

Photoshop and other digital editing packages are great tools! I. too, am just learning how to use it. There are a lot of good books on the market. One that I found is "Photoshop 7 Bible" by Deke McClelland. Another is "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Studio Techniques" by Ben Willmore. I took the liberty of adding some sky to your photograph and cloning some of the trees into it. It's just a very crude example. If you find it objectionable let me know and I will remove it. Regards.

I LOVE it!! Thanks so much, Walter! I DO need to learn more about how to use PS to my advantage!!

Hi Lou, a very good composition in my opinion. I don't think you should have caught the tree on the left corner, but you're right about the sky color.

 

In the attached image I only shifted the mid red level to about 0.8-0.7 and it changed the sky color to more blueish.

Hi Lou Ann--

 

 

This photo looks like it was taken mid-day, resulting in a washed out appearance, especially the blue sky. A polarizer would have helped, but probably only a little. For this kind of picture, my preference would be for a monochrome image. I took the liberty of modifying your image:

 

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1761052

 

 

Here's my general strategy:

 

For B&W landscapes, one generally uses yellow, orange, or red filters to darken blue skies and give clouds some real punch and contrast. So, to covert a color image to monochrome, I

 

 

(1) use the LEVELS adjustment of PS to set BLUE OUTPUT to zero (0)

 

 

(2) adjust the GREEN OUTPUT to anywhere from 130-180, then either

 

 

(3a) DESATURATE the image (HUE/SATURATION control) or

 

 

(3b) convert the image to grayscale

 

 

(4) use the LEVELS control to adjust the darkness/brightness of the image; AUTOLEVELS sometimes works, but I am usually more satisfied when I do this manually.

 

 

(5) if converted to grayscale in (3b), convert to RGB here

 

 

(6) COLORIZE image using the HUE/SATURATION adjustment

 

 

(7) Adjust the HUE and SATURATION to suit your preference; IMHO, a sepia tone seems to yield the best contrast

 

 

I think that's about it. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

Steve