Which one is better?

[arith]

Tunnel 2



or

Tunnel 1



I was just looking through some of my old photo's and noticed I didn't mind blowing the sky, but was it better to have a bit of shade and blue sky.

[jiro]

#1 for me, Steve. I see a lot of endless possibilities with this one using some dodging and burning on selected areas.

[arith]

I did the top one a bit quick really; but I still like #1 maybe with a bit of specail attention to keep the sky blue.

[tclune]

The exposure is better on tunnel 2 and the perspective is better on tunnel 1. It's just a matter of which you feel more comfortable fixing in post AFAICS.

[arith]

cheers Tom. I took my time over tunnel 1 so named because I did it first. They are from the same HDR composite but I hardly ever dodge and burn. Unfortunately the sun was directly overhead.

I think tunnel 1 with a blue sky when I get around to it.

[arith]

The original tone map might be better; it is only logarithmic. But I wanted to highlight the yellow flowers and it is proving much harder than I thought.
This is a complicated beast with 11 layers but the most important thing is clipping of the white point and change in gamma, but I've noticed it doesn't look as real and some colours have changed.
Is my first attempt still the best

[jiro]

I have no idea about the tone mapping method you did on the image Steve, but the last edit sure do look good to me. For one thing, the detail on the ground and the subtle information you were able to bring out on the building is enough to make the shot interesting. The reason why I recommended the dodging and burning technique is that it adds some subtle contrast on the image but it does not do it globally so you can really direct the eyes of the viewer as to where you want them to look at your shot longer. The problem with post-processing really is not where to apply the edit but actually when to stop editing. From your last edit, I'd say you are almost done and sure do look nice for me. A much simpler way to make it more dramatic is to wait for that nice light to photograph this location again.

[arith]

This used to be the Dept of African Studies at Birmingham University Jiro; but now on the ground floor and outside it is a museum and unfortunately it isn't open at nice light hours.

All I wanted was those nice flowers with a little detail in the shadows, the logarithmic tone map looks ok but the flowers don't stand out, so I've been using some layers to try and pick them out, in particular, a difference layer.

Dodging them looks hard, but I think I'm almost there already.

[jiro]

That makes sense. If you want to target an specific color to edit, you can use the "COLOR RANGE" tool in Photoshop to help you out. For me, it really looks like you're almost done with it.

[jiro]

A quick edit, Steve adding a dodge and burn layer on the last edited image you did. As far as I can notice, there isn't really much difference at all, a very minor change if I may say.



Here's the applied dodge and burn layer. Gray areas are not affected. Lighter areas are brightened and darker areas are darkened.

[arith]

Cor, that last one looks fantastic A really cool job thanks Jiro/