[allanmb]

Since there hasn't been any topics in the past 24 hours I thought I would get people's opinions on a recent shot I took. I took a first shot at processing this photo and decided to mute the colours but wasn't too happy with the results. After some feedback I went fully monochrome and then did a little bit of photoshopping to make the leading line of the road more pleasing.



Firstly, Which do you think is better? I think I prefer the muted colours of the first but like the composition of the second better. However I am not a fan with such an amount of editing. Which leads me to my second point



How ethical is this amount of photoshopping? Where do people generally draw the line?



1) Sort out exposure, perhaps touch colour cast but no more

2) As above but with a dose of sharpening and noise reduction

3) Some basic cloning out of distracting elements, moving birds, dust etc.

4) Major moving of large elements

5) Even more extreme, lets turn it up to 11!!



Anyway, on to the photos!



1:





2:





Thanks

Allan

[Guest]

[quote name='allanmb' timestamp='1350471158' post='20647']

Since there hasn't been any topics in the past 24 hours I thought I would get people's opinions on a recent shot I took. I took a first shot at processing this photo and decided to mute the colours but wasn't too happy with the results. After some feedback I went fully monochrome and then did a little bit of photoshopping to make the leading line of the road more pleasing.



Firstly, Which do you think is better? I think I prefer the muted colours of the first but like the composition of the second better. However I am not a fan with such an amount of editing. Which leads me to my second point



How ethical is this amount of photoshopping? Where do people generally draw the line?



1) Sort out exposure, perhaps touch colour cast but no more

2) As above but with a dose of sharpening and noise reduction

3) Some basic cloning out of distracting elements, moving birds, dust etc.

4) Major moving of large elements

5) Even more extreme, lets turn it up to 11!!



Anyway, on to the photos!



1:





2:





Thanks

Allan

[/quote]





Hmm, I wouldn't photoshop the whole background around as in the second shot. I prefer the 1. one actually. You could simply crop a bit if you want to emphasize the road more, rather redesigning the landscape.

As to photoshopping, if you make an artistic piece, you can do anything you want I presume as long as people don't expect it to be real. However, your particular landscape shot implies an existing landscape somewhere. I'd be rather disappointed to not find it like that. (i.e. similar to the National Geographic screw up where they lined up the three big pyramids in Egypt to make them fit the cover - that view did not exist). I doubt Ansel Adams would have done that. Yes, playing with dodging, burning, contrast etc. etc. to get the dynamic range for the images the way he wanted it, but not moving the mountain over, to make it look better. I think the key there is that the photographer finds the good spot, and chooses the right focal length to get the landscape image they want.

[soLong]

hi Allan,



first a disclaimer - i recently put up a shot at Queenstown in the forum gallery which was a composite to include some enhanced lake reflections which could have been real('ish) :-) - now i did that shot as a joke…..but it kind of polished up…..so so…… but it was so much trouble that i wouldn't do it again, that was a one off - it was a just an "oh look at this shiny pic" fun kind of thing -



anyhow, my answer to your first and second paragraphs -



i think there might have been just a little more to achieve pic2 from pic1 than meets the eye - so my little 'match-pic-auto-action' that i use requires:



1. the foreground hill to go over the clouds + soft hill on the left like so -







2. this composite to be resolved from the original pic1 like so;







hmmm for me, nice work but i think i would have rather gone back a few hundred or thousand years and suggested that they not clear the land for a start - look at the background with all the trees, how nice, this foreground hill is now (for me) degraded land - and unfortunately we've done much more land destruction down here



para 3? - ethical? - well you might not want to see the amount of work that often goes into making people look beautiful in their beautiful portraits



para 4? - (1) yes, (2) yes, but only slight and zonal (3) yes, (4) too much trouble for me, (5) just contrast brightness and colour curves mostly…… but i'm tired now and just like to look at wim's recent, mst's and many others here lovely real pictures

[allanmb]

Thanks for the feedback guys.



Photonius, unfortunately I couldn't get a crop that made the first much better. I would have liked to move about 100m to the right when taking the shot but unfortunately that would have meant I would be down the valley and the cloud in the distance was no longer visible :-(



soLong, Yes I rotated the foreground slightly, and then shifted it over towards the centre of the valley. I didn't do a whole lot of PPing other than that. Not as much as portrait photographers! For my normal workflow, I think I am in the same boat as you. I must say the content-aware fill in CS5 has made my life so much easier for removing small distracting elements :-D

[Guest]

[quote name='allanmb' timestamp='1350565273' post='20657']

Thanks for the feedback guys.



Photonius, unfortunately I couldn't get a crop that made the first much better. I would have liked to move about 100m to the right when taking the shot but unfortunately that would have meant I would be down the valley and the cloud in the distance was no longer visible :-(



soLong, Yes I rotated the foreground slightly, and then shifted it over towards the centre of the valley. I didn't do a whole lot of PPing other than that. Not as much as portrait photographers! For my normal workflow, I think I am in the same boat as you. I must say the content-aware fill in CS5 has made my life so much easier for removing small distracting elements :-D

[/quote]





not necessarily better, but that's what I meant with cropping (without the need to photoshop the background).

[allanmb]

Ah I see what you mean. If it weren't for the interesting misty trees on the left I would agree. I just wish I could have taken the shot a hundred metres to the right <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Guest]

[quote name='allanmb' timestamp='1350644041' post='20664']

Ah I see what you mean. If it weren't for the interesting misty trees on the left I would agree. I just wish I could have taken the shot a hundred metres to the right <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[/quote]



hmm, I didn't really notice them, I think they are too far to the left to draw any attention. A second shot with that area more prominent might have been nice.



At present, to me the street lead to the hill edge in front of the clouds with the two isolated trees held most of the attention.