Hi Arith,
Looks good - but I think you have a magenta colour cast in it
I like the rock details and the color.
I think a lot of that 'colour cast' is actually reflected light from the autumn leaves onto a damp road. If you look at the piece of road to the right of the 'stonything' the colour doesn't seem far off to me.
Ohh - that adjusted white ballance really makes the greens pop. Good job.
Hey, I never thought of that. It is definitely better than mine which I thought was close because of the road to the right. cool.
But the white of the signpost has now turned blue.
I think this photo is one of those cases where the original image was probably a correct representation of the natural scene; but natural isn't always the best which can be achieved. Hence the hours of work which photographers spend improving on nature.
It's a very difficult shot to white balance without a definitive reference; when I worked on it I tried sampling from the sign - the rail - the stone - the sky and got wildly different readings for each. Looking at the ogiginal though I can just see a magenta cast through the who scene - so at a minimum needed to add green to counter than to "X" degree (which helps being out the saturation in the greenery).
If one wanted to make the blue sign white then you'd need to add yellow - which shouldn't affect the greens too much.
If in doubt, include a grey card
I did use a grey card. But when I do the tonal map I've got an extremely bad habit of messing with the colour white and black point equivalents until I get something I like.
Then I use another application on the tiff and see if the white balance changes by picking a white point, in this case it didn't because I wasn't sure the rail is white but the swan is, I chose that.
Anyway I like yours more.