Post Processing Input

I spent all of yesterday on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a great day but a little chilly first thing in the morning and again in the evening. This is one of the first shots I took and I was pleased to finally have a few clouds to work with. The mountains are Cascade, Ruby and Bowen. The clouds had been really thick just a few minutes before and I thought there would be nothing to shoot at all.

Anyway, I'm not quite happy with the way I've processed it but I'm not sure what it is whether cropping, color balance, too strong vignetting or something else. Any suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The color on the snow on the mountains seems funky to me here. I've had some images like this. I'd try to tone down the highlights in Lightroom by either reducing the exposure and increasing the brightness or using the highlight recover slider (or both). Do this until the colors appear more normal. If this makes the image look too flat, I've found that you can do a Levels adjustment in Photoshop (pull the right slide a little to the left) and brighten some of the highlights, usually without reintroducing the funky colors. If there's still issues after the Levels adjustment, you can partially mask out areas where the Levels adjustment was overdone.

Grant said pretty much everything I was thinking too. I don't mind the cool color balance of most of the photo (it should look cold!) but the light on the peaks doesn't look quite right to me and might benefit from a little darkening.

Erik, I will keep my comment restricted to post processing, since that is what you asked for. The first issue that was mentioned by Grant is the color hue on the image, especially evident in your snow areas. The second issue I see is the mid left section, looks like you have a dark line (possibly from your GND filter) that is especially evident here. Normally I don't ever notice this from your use of filters, so I am doubting that is what it is, but either way it is distracting and can be fixed in post. Third, the mountain peaks seem very soft to me. This might be due to DoF issues, but I would try to add additional sharpness there and see what you get. Lastly, I think you could use some selective contrast throughout the image, especially in the middle areas and the peaks. Just my 2cents, which isn't worth much.

I think that the problem is the strong blue color cast is affecting the entire image. It looks great everywhere except on the lit peaks.
If you use PS, you can either just use 'AutoColor' or open Levels or Curves, choose the grey eyedropper, zoom in tight into the dead tree trunks in the lower center, and click on them.
This makes the peaks look warmer and more natural, but also removes much of the blue cast from the rest of your image. Your choice to whether to keep that globally or apply the edit selectively to the peaks only.

Erik,

I don't know how familiar you are with PhotoShop, so ask me if any of this seems incomprehensible. I'll detail an approach that I'm experimenting with recently.

As long as you haven't completely blown out the highlights (and it looks like you haven't), you can get something good out of this. In your raw developer, take down the highlights using "recovery" or something similar. Just enough that you're not clipping the whites. Then double-process the raw -- not for the luminosity, but for the color. I'd add warmth in the highlights, particularly the sunlit snow.

Then bring the blue-toned (more basic) image into PhotoShop first, as the background. Add a new layer and copy/paste the warm-toned layer into layer 1. Go to LAYER > LAYER MASK > HIDE ALL. Go back to the background layer, copy all, then paste *that* into the layer mask channel for layer 1. Change the blending mode to "multiply", then turn the transparency of the layer *way* down, like 15%. Edge up carefully until it looks good, but not to the point of velvia-on-steroids.


Whew. Does anyone know a way that I could sort of "video-record" this to show what I'm doing on screen?

Mark,

I use snag-it camtasia to screen record my steps..works great! You can record and narrate at the same time.

Erik,

I don't know how familiar you are with PhotoShop, so ask me if any of this seems incomprehensible. I'll detail an approach that I'm experimenting with recently.

As long as you haven't completely blown out the highlights (and it looks like you haven't), you can get something good out of this. In your raw developer, take down the highlights using "recovery" or something similar. Just enough that you're not clipping the whites. Then double-process the raw -- not for the luminosity, but for the color. I'd add warmth in the highlights, particularly the sunlit snow.

Then bring the blue-toned (more basic) image into PhotoShop first, as the background. Add a new layer and copy/paste the warm-toned layer into layer 1. Go to LAYER > LAYER MASK > HIDE ALL. Go back to the background layer, copy all, then paste *that* into the layer mask channel for layer 1. Change the blending mode to "multiply", then turn the transparency of the layer *way* down, like 15%. Edge up carefully until it looks good, but not to the point of velvia-on-steroids.


Whew. Does anyone know a way that I could sort of "video-record" this to show what I'm doing on screen?

I had to delete my comment and repost so I could show you what I mean.

I won't be a photoshop "expert" until I take a class on Sunday. I think what bothers me here more than color is the foreground...it lacks interest IMO. The dead trees with the large open area don't do much for me. It's hard for me to be negative of your work because 99.99% of the time it's spectacular.

I'm making the suggestion because I figured cropping could be a part of post-processing...if wrong, I'm sorry. I was thinking a crop might work here.

Here is what I was thinking on the crop. I made a couple changes to your image...if you don't want this on here Erik, let me know and I will delete immediately. I also did a couple curves adjustments and chaged w/b just a touch.

You must have taken your shot on the same day as I took my shots I posted about my commute to Frisco recently. The light was fantastic to look at, but a bear to try to convey in pp. I am not completely satisfied with my results from those shots either. I hope you will post a rework when you get it the way you want it and describe what tips you followed or methods finally worked for you.

Thanks everyone for all of your input. I'll try to find sometime this afternoon to try and work on this image again. I may even post a RAW file for all of you to play with. The lighting was quite unusual on this morning and not far off at all from my original post, perhaps it was the -20F that contributed to it. I didn't blowout any of the highlights on this even though the mountains look blown out. That was one of the first things I thought when I saw it even though the histogram said I was in the clear. A close inspection of the mountains reveals that the very deep snow and light covering of clouds combine to take away almost all detail. I know that the composition isn't stellar but this was the only thing happening that morning and I was trying to navigate through 4' of fresh powder in a giant white field with no foreground options which made things a little challenging. The rangers told me that they had received 48" of snow in just 4 days, so everything was deeply covered. Anyway, I'm appreciating all of the input on dealing with this unusual lighting. Thanks again!

Erik

P.S. I should also mention that this isn't my best image from the day, just one that I needed some help with.