Rosy dawn

Lovely warm light on the peaks and a wonderful serenity. Very nice as is but a bit more contrast might make it pop even more.

The colors are indeed lovely and the fanning action in the water adds some fine interest as well as a touch of tension. This is a fine, gentle scene. I would try dodging the aspens to see how a little more color/interest there works, but would have to see the result before deciding whether that's a real improvement.

Very nice, Kathy. I agree with Mark and Nancy Lea that it might be cool to experiment with bringing some color out of those aspens and adding a little pop overall.

Nice composition and light. I also agree with the others about playing with the contrast or color to add a little more pop to the image.

Beautiful light on the moutains and the water looks great in this Kathy. I agree with the others about a little more pop
in the image but nicely done as is. Great job.

I love the warmth on the peaks, the light is quite beautiful. I find the foreground a little soft though. Adding some sharpening would really make this image sing.

Kathy, I really like the light on the peaks combined with the lovely fall color. The radiating lines in the foreground from the flow of the stream are really nice and lead my eye into the scene.

Hi Kathy, Some wonderful light on those peaks and also in the reflections. A little more pop would probably work well but I quite enjoy the quiet mood this scene has.

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

Kathy,

I wouldn't change a thing. Beautiful scene and mood. I like it exactly as posted. Would just like to see it printed large.

pat

Kathy,

This is a lovely image of North Lake. I think a very slight pop in contrast would be nice. There is a trick where you use USM set to a high radius and low amount that increases 'micro contrast' without a severe change in overall contrast. Here are settings to try, for a starting point. I would do this on a copy of your background layer so you can delete the layer if you don't like the result.

Radius: 60
Amount: Between 8 and 15%
Threshold: 0

Here's an older article from Online Photographer about the technique.

You can try different combinations of values, but be careful: It would be easy to go too far and begin to affect overall contrast too much. I don't think you'd want that here.

The aspens could use a little pop, too. Make a selection of the aspens and then create a curves layer and adjust it. If you want to increase their saturation, load the curves mask, create a Hue/Sat layer and bump the yellows and reds a bit. It won't take much adjustment on either of these layers.

I think this image would make a lovely print--that's why I went into detail.

--P

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I'm leaving on a short trip but when I return I'll try out some of the ideas.

Kathy