Rust amongst wild flowers

[ied]

I was out on an overcast morning and this caught my eye.

Your cc most appreciated.

Irene

[chauncey]

Irene...some of us pray for overcast sky when the cloud cover acts like a giant diffuser.
These are in need of PP to make them pop.

[ied]

I totally agree chauncy... but I don't know what to do.

Probably to do with layers right? As Carol said: it sounds overwhelming right now. But I will give it a try.

Sorry that there is no space between the two.

Irene

[DanK]

Probably to do with layers right?

Don't think of it that way. Layers are a tool to accomplish something. Instead, think about what you want to accomplish, and then pick a tool. You can add lots of "pop" without layers, and you could actually use layers to decrease pop.

So, if you are just starting out, what could you do? first, open the first image in any editing program and look at the histogram. You will see that there is limited tonal range (light to dark). With the exception of a few pixels, the image takes up only about 2/3 of the tonal range. So the first two things you might do would be: increase the tonal range, and then add some contrast. I'd probably brighten it a little.

I took the liberty of making two quick adjustments to the first image: a levels adjustment to expand the tonal range and brighten the image a bit, and a curves adjustment to add contrast. You don't have to use either of these tools; there are a variety of tools that will do similar things. Here is the result. It's not a careful edit; I just wanted to illustrate these types of edits.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[ied]

Thank you Dan, that's a great improvement. So levels & curves. I will try to work on that this week. The extent for my pp on this two images was crop, contrast and sharpen.
Irene

[NorthernFocus]

Nice eye seeing this opportunity, Irene. In addition to the need for a bit of PP, in the second image the out of focus foreground flowers are a bit distracting. Particularly if you intended to show the rust among the flowers, the blooms being in focus would have been an improvement. What were your ss, fstop, and ISO settings on these?

[ied]

Thank you Dan, much appreciated. Now that you pointing this out I can see that the flowers are somewhat distracting.
SS 160 F 6.4 ISO 100 67mm

Irene