I just got back from vacation so I haven't been around for the last month or so. This is a waterfall on a tributary of the Yangtze River in China in the lower part of the Three Gorges. (even though I was 500 miles from the epicenter of the quake near Guilin at the time, I didn't feel a thing.) And yes, China is just amazing...
iso 400, f22, 1/2 sec.
What can I do to improve this? I'm a little concerned about the blown out highlights.
Thanks.
Posted by Darren White on May 22, 2008 at 11:18 PM
I would suggest shooting this scene in the early morning hours or late evening....opps...I see you just got back....ok.....you can open in raw and see if the recovery tool will help with the highlights any......or use the shadow highlights tool in CS3
Yea, it needs some careful work to minimize highlights and try to get more detail in the black shadow areas.... looks amazing and I hope to go some year.
Posted by Chris Hodney on May 23, 2008 at 12:25 PM
This is a beautiful scene, and you captured some nice texture in the water. I hope I can visit places like this in my life.
Highlights and shadows are too strong in either direction here, and there appears to be a little magenta cast to it on my monitor.
I think if you have the Raw file of this, you should be able to blend a couple different exposures to pick up detail and bring the overall brightness of the scene down. First thing I'd do would be to slide the Blacks all the way down and the highlight recover up a bit, and add contrast selectively in Photoshop.
I have begun to use curves to make sure I have an accurate black and/or white point in the image. (e-mail if you have questions about this procedure.) After that, color adjustments can be made according to your memory of the color you saw by using selective color layers in CS3. These changes can be made either globally or in selected areas. If nothing else works for bringing down the hilites in the water, you might using the burn tool at about 4% opacity and with a small soft brush size, very carefully (slowly, a stroke at a time), go over the blown areas.
This is a nice image and would sure be worth time in pp to get the most from it. How wonderful an opportunity for such a trip. Glad you were spared from the earthquake devastation.
Discussion
4 repliesiso 400, f22, 1/2 sec.
What can I do to improve this? I'm a little concerned about the blown out highlights.
Thanks.
I think this scene has a lot of possibilities....
Highlights and shadows are too strong in either direction here, and there appears to be a little magenta cast to it on my monitor.
I think if you have the Raw file of this, you should be able to blend a couple different exposures to pick up detail and bring the overall brightness of the scene down. First thing I'd do would be to slide the Blacks all the way down and the highlight recover up a bit, and add contrast selectively in Photoshop.
This is a nice image and would sure be worth time in pp to get the most from it. How wonderful an opportunity for such a trip. Glad you were spared from the earthquake devastation.