Lost Maples

[theophilus]

f8, 1/60 handheld at 17mm, ISO 200 with a Rebel XT & 17-40L

Converted using RawShooter Professional, cropped just a little bit from the left side (10%).

I am struggling with the contrast here specifically.  The leaves were just glowing in the evening light, if I brighten the midtones with levels/curves it just seems to lose all of its appeal.  I appreciate any comments.

[larkvi]

I am struggling with the contrast here specifically.  The leaves were just glowing in the evening light, if I brighten the midtones with levels/curves it just seems to lose all of its appeal.  I appreciate any comments.
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You might try selectively enhancing just the colors in the leaves with selective color and saturation/hue adjustment layers in photoshop--you can mask out the rest of the image if you want to. The new site Michael advertised in the what's new section, www.radiantvista.com, has a helpful little video on this in the Photoshop Workbench section.

Also, cropping off or bringing down the brightness (if it is not in fact blown-out) in the upper-left would allow the leaves to speak for themselves a little more--currently, they do not look very bright partly because their background is much brighter. I say this because the leaves on the right side of the image against the darker backgrounds do really have a sense of glow to them.

Someone else here can probably give a more helpful reply, however.

[pobrien3]

The leaves can't glow against the blown sky, so perhaps you need to go back to the RAW conversion to see if those pixels can be salvaged.  Also, the shadows are too deep in the lower right portion.  Try using the humble 'Shadow/Highlight...' feature in CS2.  To see the leaves 'glow', they need to have high-ish exposure values in comparison with their surroundings.  I see you used partial metering: if you metered off the leaves without exposure compensation, then the camera will expose those to be a mid value (zone 5) - you'd ideally want them to be a higher value so would need to 'overexpose' the partial reading by at least one stop.  That would also explain the too-deep shadows.  However, that would take your sky even higher...!  With such a bright sky in the image, you'll only get the effect you want by post-processing to bring the sky down and boost the leaves.

I've had a brief stab at this, but as the sky is blown I can't bring it down without it looking very artificial.  I lifted the shadows with the 'Shadow/Highlight...' function set at a high radius, boosted the yellows a little with a selective color layer, used a masked curve to boost the leaves, and increased contrast with a gentle (10%) sharpen at 100px radius.

I'd also experiment with different crops to get rid of some of the darker parts in the right of the image, and perhaps make the sky a little less prominent.

[neil]

after my 20sec:



You want to process your raw file over again for the sky.  But for the main image area, the goal is to process your raw file out to give you the necessary dimension of contrast in the highlights and shadows.  You'll have to apply some type of shadow recovery, then sharpening and then add your contrast back in.  I think the easiest methos is the soft light overlay, but you can do it any way you like.

[theophilus]

Thanks for the replies.  The sky is totally blown out on the left side, I can't recover any detail from it.  Here's a couple different crops I tried:





I was able to get the sky a little more blue, but my main attempt here was at a crop that works.  I still need to work on the colors and contrast quite a bit, this is all I had time for at the moment.

[Jonathan Wienke]

The blown-out sky in the background really ruins this shot. Try re-shooting with the camera on a tripod and bracket 5 shots each a stop apart, and then blend them in PS.

[boku]

The blown-out sky in the background really ruins this shot. Try re-shooting with the camera on a tripod and bracket 5 shots each a stop apart, and then blend them in PS.
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And pray the wind doesn't blow! (reminded of this little fact by the tornado warning in Ohio right now).