Justine Thank you for your comment. Please bare with me but how would you adjust the white/level?? Is this a setting in the camra or can I do it in Photoshop???
It's not easy taking pictures of it with all the tourists mingling around. I was there the day after a woman had committed suicide by jumping to her death, it felt creepy.
You should be able to adjust it in the camera or in Photoshop. I'm learning about Photoshop, but there will be others with more technical know how that can explain it well. I think the pictures look great. I like the second one better but the first looks a little blurred? Did you use a tripod?
I'd do it in Photoshop. It may not be the right thing for that shot. Won't hurt.
Here are a couple of tutorials that can explain better then I can type. :)
In the second shot (much the stronger of the 2) there's noticeable vignetting int he upper corners. I deduce you're using a filter and that the filter is vignetting at the widest angle you can shoot at. You gotta watch that... I'm gonna pop it in photoshop and see that can be done, bbl. It's a very nice shot.
This is fairly basic photoshop. First I opened a levels adjustment layer and used the eyedroppers to set black, white, and gray points. White was the brightest point of the water at lip of the falls, black was deepshadow under the falls, gray was the rock face around the middle of the image.
The I opened hue/saturation as an adjustment layer and bumped up yellow and green, boosted red quite a bit less, and muted blue and cyan a little.
I used the clone tool to create new tree in the vignetted area and to eliminate red distractions in the water lower left.
I used the healing brush tool to borrow texture from the bright tree upper left and spread it around the blown-out areas of that tree.
I used dodge on some of the shadows along the right side. I used some streaks of both burn and dodge on highlights and shadows various spots throughout, at only 6% brush, to goose the contrast a little in various areas, just a lick and a spit.
I ran USM then went to "edit/fade USM" and set the mode to "liminance and the slider at 50%
voila!
BTW, the only way to keep that filter from vignetting at wide angle, if that's what it was, is to buy the next size larger filter and use a step-ring to mount it. Or, depending on the filter, buy a more expensive filter with a lower profile; some of the cheap ones are quite a bit thicker and that can cause this vignetting.
Robt.
Edit to add: Oh, yeah; I cloned out a bright trunk on the tree upper left and some water-dispersion distractions where the falls enter the pool.
Robert thanks so much explaination. Goes to show you how much you can improve something when you know how.
You're quite welcome. Why not take a shot at it yourself and see if you can duplicate (or improve) my version? It's a very nice shot. Worth the work.
Robt.
edit: P.S., I see I missed fixing he vignette upper left, why don't you go ahead and download the one I made and fix that and post it back up? Create somethign out of nothing with the clone and/or healing brush tools, borrowing from neighboring areas.
Incidentally, some might feel I've bumped the saturation too far on this. I often do that for illustrative purposes. Somewhere in between might be the best place for the saturation of yellow and green on this image.
