Let’s play #56

[Ben Egbert]

The goal in this week’s Let's Play is to show how you would improve or fix this photo. Show us how you would render it and please explain the steps taken to get that rendering.

This image has a tough DR, but it’s easy enough to make the foreground bright enough. The problem is that it then lacks a subject. It’s also a challenge to get the foreground brightness to match the sky.

The embedded image is a small jpg of the raw, but use the DNG file for rework.

 

[Ben Egbert]

No takers?

 

[AlanLichty]

OK - I'll toss in a stab at it:

In Lightroom:

Graduated filter on lower part with a Luminosity mask to filter the sky
Temp: 44
Tint: 28
Exposure: +2.78
Clarity: +23
Texture: +12

In Photoshop I did a slight crop on the right. Next I ran it through Topaz Clear and then used the History Brush to get some detail and contrasts in selected areas. I used Precision Contrast in Topaz Studio for some final tweaks to add some pop.

 

[JimFox]

No takers?

Sorry Ben, I missed you starting this. Let me put an Alert out so others can see its up.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Alan thanks for entering and a fine job you did.

 

[Kyle Jones]

Here's mine. I decided to go crazy with the sky and do just enough with the foreground to keep it somewhat balanced.

Adding some of my steps...
Temp 5500
Tine +10
Exposure 0
Contrast -33
Highlights -23
Shadows +100
Whites 0
Blacks +10
Clarity -19
Dehaze +29
Vibrance +10
Curve adjustment whites -42 lights +46
Grad on the sky with temp -37 and tint 13

Then into photoshop:
To the sky (in a light-lights selection) added a bunch of contrast with a curve and then adjusted the sky color balance toward red, magenta and blue
Did some color dodging on the lighter areas of the ground and burning the darker areas to create some definition there. Did a little more noise reduction on the ground too.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Kyle, great way to handle this.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Here is my offering.

In ACR
Set lens correction
WB> as shot
Exposure +1.13
Cont +5
Highlights -79
Shadow +74
Whites -1
Blacks +7

All other sliders zero

Heavy crop on bottom and right side.

In photoshop

Mark darkest and lightest points using threshold.
In curves set BP at 5,5,5 WP at 250,250,250
Run Topaz Studio2, Clarity, Dehaze, Detail at 30%
Run Topaz Studio color and contrast boost 2.
Run Topaz exposure
Make ground layer and increase brightness with level.
Reduce Cyan on ground layer.
Merge layers and run Topaz Brilliant Warm
Run topaz exposure again.
Reduce blue.
Reset BP and WP.

Add vignette.

 

[Dale Berlin]

Nik Color Effects Pro:
Tonal Contrast:
Highlights -53
Midtones: 40
Shadows: 20
Saturation: 20
Glamour Glow on sky 12%
Darken Border 15%

Photoshop:
Contrast -7

 

[Ben Egbert]

Nice one dale and thanks for playing

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Interesting interpretations. I'll start working on mine soon. Been super busy with many different things lately.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Here is my take on this. Ideally I would bracket and blend this scene.

Developed twice, one for sky and one for ground and blend. Pushed exposure 1 stop as well as +80 on shadows and black for the ground layer. Applied a graduated filter to the sky to tame both the exposure and color to taste.

Applied a fairly heavy amount of denoise using Topaz DeNoise AI to the ground layer.

Finally cropped to a pano aspect ration losing some of the ground and a bit of the sky.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Excellent work Jameel, I really like this one.