View Beyond Mesa Arch

Last may, at the Moab shindig, Bret took a bunch of us up to Mesa Arch at Canyonlands Nat'l Park just after sunrise. Several people set about getting their own capture of that icon, but I was much more taken by the view through and beyond the arch. The hazy conditions that morning helped to give this scene a ghostly look.

I'm wondering if this might look better in B&W. What do you think?

I messed with this in b&w, and it just doesn't come close to replicating the beauty that the color version conveys.
I like the telephoto perspective, and the world has enough Mesa Arch shots, right?
You might consider using that 'image polish' technique here. You'll have to mask off the upper (brighter) sky first as it will get overexposed.
Excellent work, Howard!

I like it!

That is just a fine tele-comp. Excellent use of layers.

Very cool. I've always loved what's beyond that arch as well. I kind of like the warm/cool contrast created by the reds/blues of the color version but it might look cool as a b/w. Give it a whirl and post your attempt for us to see and compare.

Very nice! Like the subtle colors in the background.

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. John, what's your preferred "polish" settings so I can give that a try?

I used the High Structure (harsh) setting in Nik SEP2 for this B&W conversion. It sacrifices some of the haziness, but achieves better separation of the distant layers IMO.

One thing I've noticed in both the color and B&W versions is that the sky is noticeably dingier than in the original on my monitor. GIF conversion issues?

For Image Polish, set your Unsharp Mask filter to:
Amount-20
Radius-50
Threshold-0

It'll work better with the color version.

GIF conversion?

John, I was just suggesting that converting my files to .gif format for posting might be the reason why the sky is noticeably dingier in the forum image than in the original on my desktop monitor.

Thanks for the settings. I'll let you know how it works out.

Why would you want to convert your files to GIF format which supports a maximum of 256 colors vs. the JPEG format which supports 16.7 million colors??

John, I'm trying to get under the forum's 300kb limit while trying to max the size at or as close to 800 pixels on the long side. Unless I'm doing something wrong, I find I can't do that in .jpg. In fact, even at 8 bit, 72ppi, I sometimes have to reduce from 800 pixels to just get under the 300kb limit.

Preference to the color version.
Are you using Save for Web and using the quality slider to get down to 300kb for the 800pixel jpegs?

O.K., let's see if I've figured this out correctly. This is a .jpg file at 800 pixels on the long side.

O.K. I got it to post as a.jpg just fine. However, the sky at the top of the image is still noticeably more beige than in the original file, which almost pure white.

Hmmm.

Looks good, Howard.
Perhaps looking at this on a darker background helps influence the upper sky color? Looks quite natural to me here.
Try making a print and see how it looks.

You're right, John, about the image polish. A definite improvement. Thanks for the advice.