Utah lake sunset

[Ben Egbert]

Utah lake has a haze most days which really narrows the histogram. Spreading it out without messing up the colors is difficult.

Here is a 3000 wide jpg to work with.

200209-12365-5DS R

• Ben Egbert
• Feb 13, 2020

Here is my best effort which I am not happy with.

 

[Brian]

I think it's great. I fly into SLC quite a bit and there are some incredible sunsets in that whole valley.

 

[JimFox]

I am heading out in a few to Trail run, and then I am seeing Sonic the Hedgehog tonight at the movies, so I won’t be able to do any edits until tonight.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Its a great image Ben and has a lot of potential. Here is my quick attempt. I lightened the water and added a bit of motion blur - Somehow dark cyan cast to the water doesn't work for me.

 

[AlanLichty]

My version:

I left the water alone since I have have seen similar shades in the winter before.

 

[Ben Egbert]

My version:

View attachment 25280

I left the water alone since I have have seen similar shades in the winter before.

Thanks Alan, I have one I just worked up that is not much different, but you have more contrast.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Its a great image Ben and has a lot of potential. Here is my quick attempt. I lightened the water and added a bit of motion blur - Somehow dark cyan cast to the water doesn't work for me.

View attachment 25275

Thanks Jameel. How did you handle the haze?

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Thanks Jameel. How did you handle the haze?

I used dehaze in ACR - not much about 12 or so. I did most of the contrast work using Dodge/Burn.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I used dehaze in ACR - not much about 12 or so. I did most of the contrast work using Dodge/Burn.

I am going to do one with more dehaze in ACR and follow your formula for cyan.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Here is my latest try based on advice from this thread.

 

[JimFox]

The brightest clouds Ben feel like they are blowing out, you are losing detail in them now.

 

[JimFox]

Here is mine, perhaps the saturation could be pushed more in the sky.

2 things struck me. Is that the image felt unlevel even though the shoreline was level, and the image felt unbalanced since the peaks on the left were lit up and not on the right in combination with the sloping down of the mountains on the right.

So cropping back to 2:3 format solved that for me. Not only did the image feel balanced, but it no longer felt unlevel.

I then also brightened the lit up areas a bit while darkening the non lit up area's a bit. The water I handled separately, pushing the cyan saturation to give it a bit of life and not darkening it.

 

[JimFox]

I should have added a bit of sharpening to it I see now. But that's simple enough.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, good job and I like what you got. I think one thing that bothers me is the snow was pure white earlier in the week and after some melting looks a bit gritty. By that I mean the bare spots were covered earlier in the week.

 

[JimFox]

Glad you liked the edits Ben.