Something old and something new

[travela]

I took this pic in Turkey and I particularly like the composition and subject, but something seems a bit 'flat' about it. Does it perhaps need more processing? Or perhaps it is fine the way it is? All comments / opinions very welcome.

[Donald]

Liz

I'm not looking at this on my home, calibrated, monitor, so my only comment is about the composition.

You say you like it ... and so you should. But what do you think it would look like if you were to crop it at the left hand side just at the point where the roof that slopes slightly upwards meets the wall at the back. I think this would give you close to a 7 x 5 aspect ratio. Doing this would remove that very hard shadow line that drops down towards the bottom left and, I think, takes attention away from us focusing in on and fully appreciating the very creative juxtapositioning of old and new.

One idea to ponder!

[Radu Dinu Cordeanu]

I took this pic in Turkey and I particularly like the composition and subject, but something seems a bit 'flat' about it. Does it perhaps need more processing? Or perhaps it is fine the way it is? All comments / opinions very welcome.

Hi,
A few compressing in levels
Radu Dinu

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Liz and welcome to the CiC forums.

I'm at work at the moment so wouldn't like to comment too much and I can't try anything myself right now.

Some Local Contrast Enhancement (LCE) might help (= a bit more processing), but you would need to be careful it did not nuke the detail in the foreground stonework - it might need applying only to the background, or at least, very carefully to the pillars.

Not sure on my work monitor, but I think some noise reduction would help - I'll have a go tonight, at least there's a nice big picture to try with.

Also might be worth cloning out the wind turbine that is 'sat' on top of the stonework.
I'd also look at the CA (= Chromatic Abberation = red and green edges) and desaturate 'sponge out' the worst areas.

Talk later,

[travela]

I like the improvements made by cropping, but I'm afraid CA and LCE are beyond my rather basic ps skills! Will study the help files and get back to you...

[Donald]

Liz

I think that works better.

Now you've just got to master the Local Contrast Enhancement stuff and you'll be flying. Please keep coming back with any questions about this, or anything else to do with either the capture or the post-processing.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Liz,

After my reply, I did this last night, but fell asleep before posting



I forgot to do the CA, but it's not too bad.

The main improvement I think is the lack of noise in the sky, view big; F11 to full screen browser, then click image to see what I mean.

I think I prefer your second crop, or is it a different image?

The LCE is easy, although I didn't apply it to the columns as advised.
Use USM, set amount to 20%, radius to say 80px and threshold to zero.

Cheers,