I suspect that with a 2 pixel white border and the rest of the background black would reveal there is more to the dark areas than we can see here. I really like the comp with the tree and the placement of the Milky Way. That lens gave you great clarity to the stars. Excellent imo!
I love the Comp. The image comes across too soft to my eyes and may need to be sharpened. I wonder what a tad bit of light painting the foreground would do....
This sure has a lot of potential, CAZ!
There are two things I would do:
First, go back to Lightroom/ACR and change the White Balance to Tungsten, then adjust to taste.
A bluer sky is much more pleasing with these type of images.
Second, brighten it up a bit in Lightroom/ACR. Then in Photoshop, choose the Magic Wand tool, set the Tolerance to '10' and uncheck 'Contiguous' in the toolbar at the top of your screen. Click on that bright spot in the Milky Way to select it and other bright areas. Select->Modify->Feather and choose 3 pixels to feather the selection and lose many of the stars that were selected.
Select->Inverse. This selects everything except those bright areas. Now go to Curves, lift the middle of the Curve upward to taste. That should make things much more pleasing. Let us know whichever way you go.
I love the color version of this you posted on FB better than this B and W. Has much more interest in color
WOW!!!!!! I just played around with your image using John's tips (minus the LR stuff...I just put a blue photofilter on it in PS)and the results are incredible!!!!! John, you are a wizard with your simple PS adjustments
Thanks folks! All of the suggestions have been terrific. However, my implementation of them seems lacking (operator error!). The main problem was that I ended up with an absurd amount of noise. I'll re-work this again tonight and eventually re-post.
Oh, that's so much nicer, CAZ! What do you think?
This looks natural enough to me. I advocated brightening it a bit to help define the tree better, but if you're OK with this version, then so am I.
Adding a (+ Repost) to the title might help you get more looks. As if 6'6"+ weren't enough....
Discussion
19 repliesThanks!
In case you're interested:
14mm Samyang/Bower/Rokinon
f/2.8
30 Sec.
ISO equivalent - 2500
2:something a.m.
There are two things I would do:
First, go back to Lightroom/ACR and change the White Balance to Tungsten, then adjust to taste.
A bluer sky is much more pleasing with these type of images.
Second, brighten it up a bit in Lightroom/ACR. Then in Photoshop, choose the Magic Wand tool, set the Tolerance to '10' and uncheck 'Contiguous' in the toolbar at the top of your screen. Click on that bright spot in the Milky Way to select it and other bright areas. Select->Modify->Feather and choose 3 pixels to feather the selection and lose many of the stars that were selected.
Select->Inverse. This selects everything except those bright areas. Now go to Curves, lift the middle of the Curve upward to taste. That should make things much more pleasing. Let us know whichever way you go.
WOW!!!!!! I just played around with your image using John's tips (minus the LR stuff...I just put a blue photofilter on it in PS)and the results are incredible!!!!! John, you are a wizard with your simple PS adjustments
Thanks again!
I've still got to find a way to keep the color in the Milky Way and the stars, but I think I'm getting closer.
Darren - That Samyang is outrageous! It's a blast to shoot with and the edge-to-edge sharpness is shocking.
This looks natural enough to me. I advocated brightening it a bit to help define the tree better, but if you're OK with this version, then so am I.
Adding a (+ Repost) to the title might help you get more looks. As if 6'6"+ weren't enough....
Now if I could only find the right balance between noise reduction and sharpening for this type of shot...