Bridge, Pencil Pine Creek

I'm having trouble getting a good scan of this one. The tranny is bright and green, but the water is still clean and white. I can't seem to match it in the jpg. Any quick suggestions?

Colour off balance? TIA.

Was this taken on the overland track? Nice composition, its hard to comment on your colour issue without seeing the original. I have posted a number of overland shots and might have walked over this bridge

 

 

A perfect pic in all aspects. Good lining that draw my eyes to peruse the every detail of it. Excellent patient and good and careful composition . a 7/7 rating is deserved. Thanks for sharing.Keep it up.

Nice view, I like it.

Hi John, here's a stab at it. I just used the far water as levels / grey point.

 

BTW I ran the Photoshop CS highlights tool over the far greenery. It acts a bit like a polariser and eliminates some of the glare from the plants. Plus it unwittingly increases saturation and, hey, who doesn't like that? (:p)

here's my take.

 

I pulled the bottom of the curves graph down on all three channels, which simultaneously made it darker, and increased the contrast and saturation by eliminating the neutral (white) values in the shadows. Then, I pulled the green curve down just a little, which added magenta into the brown areas, and enhanced the greens a little more.

The composition is superb, John. But I don't like the quality of the colours represented in this compressed PN concoction. Most disconcerting of all, is the green tinge in the water at bottom left. I'm sure experienced Photoshoppers can fix this easily for online purposes. I've dabbled with colour balance for a bit and found that adjusting the Shadows to +17 Blue / -13 Magenta, Midtones to Magenta -5 / Red +5, Highlights to +16 Blue / -18 Magenta, gives me a more realistic scheme.

However, as you should know, I'm not a PS buff, so I just fiddle with it until it looks a little better on screen. No quick fix from me, otherwise...

Whilst a quick overview of both Leigh's and Doug's version, make my first simplistic suggestion look anaemic. I do think Doug's version has become too dark for my liking.

However, Doug has successfully changed the colour of the water, whereas in Leigh's version it is still green.

Peter, that's because I'm a foreboding, dark forest kind of guy.

John, very good presentation of this image. Well done.

Crikey, how do I begin to thank you all for the kind comments and photoshop lessons?

 

I wish I could show you the slide on the lightbox, perhaps when you all pop over.

 

Mark, it's not the Overland Track. It's a less-travelled track to the west of Pencil Pine.

I like mine the best and want to take this opportunity to thank John for posting his, and expressing doubts, so I could change it at will to suit my own aesthetics and without guilt.

 

Thanks John.

Assessing them more closely now, I think Leigh's is closest, but they are all insipid compared to how it actually was. It was incredibly green, one of the greenest scenes I've ever seen.

I'm always trying to figure out this PS thing so I thought I'd stick my neck out (yet again) Feel free to tell me I'm way off the mark.

Welcome Hanna, and thanks very much for your version. Your greens look better, and your brown bark looks fine on the tree, but now we have a pink tinge to the water???????

Hi John,

 

although you have already got a lot of good advice, I could not stand trying another approach. I used the Quickmask to roughly mask everything except the water areas. Then I used the selective colour tool to remove all Cyan, Magenta and Yellow from the Whites. Afterwards I inversed the selection again and increased saturation by 20 and reduced lightness by 10. There is still some green in the water but I think this fits the scene. BTW, a wonderful one.

 

Best regards,

Anthony

Without seeing the original tranny (or scene) it's hard to know what it should look like. In this attempt, I've inferred from your response to Hanna that the moss was more green than yellow. Here goes.

Wait, This is fun. Can we have more than one try? Here's my second attempt, based on what I hear John to be saying, and the best of all the previous efforts.

 

Other than adjusting the color, I used a separate layer to neutralize the cast in the water. The final result is from several layers, for example, one for the water (as shown beneath the picture), one to enhance John's greens, another to work on the reds and browns of the dead leaves, and still another to lighten the detail in the tree trunk on the right. Various parts of each layer were erased, or enhanced, and then merged, erased or enhanced, and then merged, etc, to yield the end result, which aimed at more green, per John's memory, white water, which everyone likes, and at keeping the ground clutter separated. I also wanted it to be as lush as possible, full of life, moisture and atmosphere.

Geez Doug, how does a 'green' photoshopper keep up with that. You've done a great job and provided a comprehensive lesson. Thanks!

I think Doug's second effort solved the color cast problem, at least as I see it on my screen. Wish I had some suggestions but I'm an absolute butcher when it comes to color. Compositionally its excellent. Nice balance but also a nice sense of movement and depth given the placement of the bridge.

What an astonishingly rewarding discussion this has turned out to be! Thank you all so much for your company.

Doug, your new colours are getting very realistic, as one would hope, having done so much homework on it, but so are Leigh's, and Leigh's new version is so much punchier than yours! You can't possibly let this rest at second best, can you?

I don't know which one to rate, so I'm going to give you a cummulative 7/7. I'm also a little depressed after all of this, because it shows how far I have to go (or how far behind I am) in the digital realm. But I digress. The composition of the photograph is superb and being a deep forest guy myself, I know how difficult a subject this is. Well done one and all. Regards, Doug.

How Ken Duncan do you want to make this, John?!!

LOL! It's turning into a contest.

Hanna, be tenacious. Don't give up. Open John's original and try it again. Then try it one more time. Even if you don't replicate anything, you're sure to learn something new. Andy, you're not alone in butchering color. I have an ocular disparity in color reception. One eye adds a lime-yellow cast, so I have to make sure I have them both open. John, I think you and Leigh have monitors that favor Aussie efforts. At any rate, I'll send Leigh an email attachment as a token of my good sportsmanship. Leigh, the attachment will help your computer run faster and all kinds of cool stuff. Pay no attention to the fact that it has the same name as a well known computr virus. Doug Hawks is right: Subjects like this are difficult. Way to go, John, for posting an image worth investing so much time into.