Mt. Morrison

Fall color below Mt. Morrison.

This was taken the same morning as my previous post. Worked this up last night for several hours and have since made several revisions and two test prints on crane museo siver rag. Getting closer.

I hope this doesn't look too contrasty or just a hair flat. Would love to hear what you think about that or anything else.

single exposure processed in canon's DPP 3.8 and converted by hand in CS2 using channel mixer and several curves adj layers and masks.

Cory Freeman
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A real IR look to the image. Great sky and popping contrast. For me, I might back off the yellow channel just a touch to tone down the trees, it works well as presented. Great sky! Cool image, Cory.

thanks Harley! I thought it looked IRish too, but just a 100% red 0 grn, 0 blue in channel mixer. I have been struggling w/ the highlights in the trees as you pointed out. My first of several renditions had toned the leafs down to just around 200, which seemed lacking in a white point. So here I've got them 230-250; probably a bit hot in the extreme HLs. The print looks pretty good though. ;) I've got it haning on the wall at work so I can keep dialing it in. Thanks for the input!

I forget that CS2 B&W only has the three channels. CS3 provides more. You can always back off on the conversion, then mask it (or multiple masks) and uses curves to pop the highlights where you want them. It looks very good as is.

Man don't temp me w/ upgrading photoshop!! haha. Since my wife is a teacher at the college, she can get cs5 suite for very low $$$. Too bad I can't get OS X Leopard(10.5) anymore on my antiquated '03 G5; looked into that today I did. I've been dreaming of that new 8 core powermac......it's good to have dreams!

Cory,

I really like this. I do agree about the leaf tones. I don't know if this will work, but you could try using a Selective Color adjustment layer, assuming the image is still RGB.

Create the layer, select 'Whites' and then add a little black. It won't take much. You want to get the white point down so that at least some ink is laid on the paper. Don't worry about the numbers. You'll get a nice result by doing this one by inspection.

This rocks, in my opinion. Good work!

--P

thanks Preston, that's a good idea about using selective color. As it is there's just a touch of ink going down in the highlights so it's not paper white. That's a good point though with ink jet, err, pigment prints; if ink isn't laid down on the paper you can tell by holding the print at an angle and you can see the dull spot(s) where there isn't any ink. I don't think that's the same with traditional wet chem prints.

It's cold this morning, 19 degrees, fall has finally arrived!! ;)

I don't do this kind of photography; nevertheless, I like this.

@Robert: soooo, what exactly do you mean by ..this kind..." ? LOL thanks for leaving a comment!!

Definitely doesn't appear flat at all, and looks to have a good amount of contrast. To my eye, the trees look just a little too hot/white to me, and might work better if they were toned down a notch, so that the bright areas between the trees and sky are more balanced?

Great comp and sky, and I agree with some of the other comments. The whites do seem a little bright, at least at this size. Very cool shot of Morrison.