LR post-processing, what'd I do wrong?

[Nate]

I know this image has some issues w/ composition but wanted to get some input on the post-processing I applied to it. Any advice/critique is appreciated. TIA.

Original


Post-processing


Steps taken in LR
1. Crop/straighten
2. Exposure -1.45
3. Contrast +25
4. Blue Luminance Shift -10
5. Sharpening +25

[jiro]

Hello, Nate.

1. I'm not so sure about what you're seeing on your monitor screen but on my side using Firefox Browser, I'm seeing a semi- yellow-greenish tint on the pictures. My suggestion would be to adjust the white balance sliders' TEMP to -21 and the TINT to +6 to mildly correct it.

2.You adjusted the exposure slider on your edit to make it darker but to me it looks nicely exposed. What you can probably do is to keep the EXPOSURE to zero and adjust the recovery slider to 75 to balance the highlight with the midtones.

3. You can also boost the contrast, clarity, and vibrance sliders to add some pop to the image. When I adjusted your first image, my adjustment values are: Contrast = 27, Clarity = 45, and Vibrance = 17.

4. For the HSL sliders, usually it's a matter of personal preference as to what colors are you going to emphasize and mute relative to the saturation and luminance values.

here is what i came up with:


I cloned out some part, cropped the image some more, and on the final edit I added some more extra contrast. Hope this helps.

[Geoff F]

Nate, I suppose a lot depends on what you expect/desire from a photo and everybody sees a scene slightly differently.

But for me, your original photo (apart from a crop on the right edge) is almost perfect so I wouldn't do a lot to it.

Possibly strengthen the sky and trees slightly but I would do this on a layer and mask so that the river and bank weren't affected to the same degree. Then some careful sharpening.

Maybe a suitable case for converting a Raw original with two slightly different exposures then combining through a mask.

[Nate]

Thanks for the input guys.

Willie, I like where you ended up colorwise but it looks a little soft to me. Is that because of using a high recovery value?

Geoff, I'm fairly new to LR and have little to no experience with Photoshop (i.e. using layers). I guess I could also do this with the gradient tool in LR?

[jiro]

Willie, I like where you ended up colorwise but it looks a little soft to me. Is that because of using a high recovery value?

It looks soft because I enlarged it and I worked with the limited pixel density of your small image posted. If I can get my hands on the bigger file it would be easy to add some sharpness to it that could be discernible.

[Nate]

Gotcha, thanks. I've read a couple things online (I know take everything you read online w/ a grain of salt) that higher recovery values decrease contrast so I've been leery of over using it.