Carmel, CA

[opus]

Does this look overworked? I think I've got some good shots from this trip, but they've all got a grey cast over them. I'm trying to learn how to pull the color back out.

[opus]

Here is the original.

[mikehulsebus]

Because I can't point on your screen, I stuck arrows on the image so it'd be easier to reference....yeah, i went a little arrow crazy...sorry.
Well, is it overworked....hm, I'd have to say yes, in some respects. The water is looking just a little too blue. As I understand it, the reason that water is blue is some combination of blue having the longest wavelength and the face that the sky is blue. The second thing in mind, the water at B is lookin just a little bit too blue in relation to the sky at A. Speaking of the the sky though, I really like these clouds, and I think with some adjustments they could have some more pop to 'em.
Also, because of the way conditions were, you've got a really blue section at E that the eye heads right on over to. I think the water being so blue in comparason is detracting from the whole atmosphere of the shot. It goes from being a shot about the location and the scale (love that guy at D being there) to being about how blue the water at this place was--at least in my mind. Maybe if you could somehow dehazify (just making up a word) the sky near the horizon and color everything up.
I messed around with some enhancments of my own but ended up with less than stellar results--yours ended up better. I think, if its possible, that you may wanna try editing the different parts of the photo--the sky and the land--as two different layers to get things right for everything.
Oh, and I may be imagining it, but did you do sharpening to this image? looking at C and areas right of it, I may be seeing it was sharpened to much, but maybe its my imagination.
Anyhow though, I like the photo and look forward to seeing whatcha end up doing with it

[shesells]

Does this look overworked? I think I've got some good shots from this trip, but they've all got a grey cast over them. I'm trying to learn how to pull the color back out.

(when I posted the tutorial, this moved to the bottom, go figure!)
Kelly, thats a beautiful scene and well shot. Good composition and the man in the blue jeans is perfectly placed. The sky just rules. It's really a nice photo. When I first got my camera, my whole first shoot was the same, seemed like there was a grey film over everything. Found out later that my white balance was off. All it took was using a grey card to correct it. I actually thought something was wrong with the camera. Here's my fix of it. Tell me if you want to know the steps taken. This pic is well worth working on till you get it right.
~ Kit

[Chunk]

Here is the original.

Thought I'd take a try at this.
In Paintshop Pro I did an automatic color correction to very slightly warm the whole shot. PSP has a remove color cast choice (I chose it) in that dialog box. Then did a levels correction to get some whites. This left the clouds too bright overall so I did this curves adjustment to put some definition back in the clouds.
I know there will be better solutions given (how about another trip out there? ).

[PuckJunkey]

Kelly: I don't think your shot looks "over-worked" at all. Usually images that have been Photoshopped too much contain obvious haloing, softening and other artifacts that yours doesn't. I will say Kit's rendition is a little more post card-like than yours, but I don't know that it's more realistic. I think you did a good job of pulling the actual colors that you noticed out of the shot, while not making them overly saturated, etc.

[shesells]

Dear Kelly:

This is a pretty scene even straight out of the camera but, I agree that it needs post processing work done on it in Photoshop. Kit's version looks exactly like Carmel to me.

Kit: What did you do to achieve these results?

Kelly: Do you have more photographs of Carmel? Its just about my favorite place in California!

Best to You,
Penny

Hi Kelly, thought I would give my method because Penny asked. I like to bring photos to the accurate colors that were in the original photo (for landscapes anyway ) so I have found this method to be a subtle way to bring up the light and color. Here's what I did for this pic:

1. Opened your original dark jpg in photoshop CS and immediately made a duplicate background layer to work on.

2. Select the new layer then create a new adjustment layer by clicking on the little ying/yang looking icon at the bottom of the layers panel. Choose levels.

3. First take the middle eyedropper and try to find a neutral grey in the pic, I think I chose the darker sand on the far shore (to the left in back). but some spots in the clouds will work. This will set the white balance correctly.

4. While still in levels, correct the highlights and shadows in each individual color channel instead of just in RGB. This works by just finding the details that are missing in these colors and also sets the tone. Don't adjust the middle slider or the color will change from true. Just take the black and white slider from each channel and move it to just barely up to the point where the histogram starts. In the blue channel I only moved the white balance halfway to where the hist. starts because the photo has a lot of blue in it to begin with and it can be adjusted later. At this point you have the original colors that were in the scene but it is still dark.. never fear, we can bring out the light.
At this point, if you prefer the first color correction that I posted here (its a little brighter) then stay in levels, go back to RGB and slide the middle slider from 100 to 104. It just brightens the middle tones a little. Don't adjust the white and black slider in RGB.

5. You just have to trust me on this one: ok, now select the background copy and duplicate it again. Then select this new layer and go to main menu (up top) choose - Image/adjustment/desaturate. Then choose again - Image/Adjustment/Invert. Don't freak out .. ok now with the desaturated layer still selected go to "blending mode" (top of layer panel) and change it from normal to overlay. Then change the opacity to 80%.

6.With that same desaturated layer still selected go to main menu: filter/blur/gaussian blur and set it to 97.7, click ok

7.Looking good but needing a little warmth, so don't go to "color balance" because it puts the color over the whole image. You just want to bring out reds and yellow that are already in the photo. I do this by selecting the original background copy (not the desaturated one) and create an adjustment layer - choose Hue/saturation.

8. In the hue/saturation dialog box don't adjust anthing but Saturation and these are the ones I chose for this pic: Red - up the sat. to +16, it just brings out the red in the seaweed slightly. Then Yellow - +24, just adds some warmth to the forground and in the clouds where it already is. Now blue - up the sat. to +15. As you can see by clicking preview off and on, it barely does a thing but gives it a tiny punch since you lost that by taking the pic in the wrong white balance. choose ok.

9.At this point its looking good so go to layer/flatten image.

10. you can leave it like this but I thought it needed a tiny bit of tweaking, so I chose filter/sharpen/unsharp mask and used these settings which are very minimal: Amount 77, Radius .5, Threshold 2. which you can see just lights up the ground a bit.

11. I did one more thing, gave it a tiny curve to boost contrast very little, as you can see by the screenshot of the curves dialog box.

TADA! There ya go. adjust things the way you feel as you go along by constantly clicking preview on and off and eyeballing it. Your taste may be different from mine.

Please don't anyone be insulted by my giving every detail, but some reading this may not be familiar with photoshopCS.

It's a fantastic photo Kelly, and I've fallen more in love with it while working on it. lol

If you have any questions, let me know. Even though this looks like a lot of working, very little has been done to the original.
~ Kit

[opus]

Kit, just the opposite happened with me. When I first got my camera, every shot was fantastic, but somewhere along the line I screwed up the white balance without even knowing what I did. I need to take a peek at the manual to figure out how to fix it.

Penny, I have exactly two more scenes of Carmel. We literally made this one stop on our way through, because my husband was tired of all my picture-taking and just wanted to get to a hotel. I'll post both for you, with minimal adjustments, because I'm on my laptop at a Starbucks in Mill Valley, CA right now. ( )

[opus]

Here is the other one. I wish the truck wasn't there.