DSLR Photography Forum

Well people, my mother and father have recently finished their retirement house which is located at Tingoora, Just outside Kingaroy (about 2 1/2 to 3 hrs northwest of Brisbane). On the evening of Boxing Day last year we had a big storm roll through and out to the horizon, this pic was taken at that time with my old Olympus D540Z, and still remains one of my favourite photo's i have taken......... I played around with the brightness and the saturation a little on the first and the original is underneath.

Any ideas or changes that anyone would like to do? I would love to see more advanced photoshopping techniques as i have only just started using a basic version of Adobe Photoshop........

I like the picture, the sky is very dramatic. I also like what you've done with it. There's one thing though: With your treatment you lost detail in the clouds (at least on my monitor). If you do the same thing but mask the clouds, it might look even better IMO.

If you work with layers in Photoshop, it's quite easy, you just click in the layer mask rectangle in the layer window and start painting black on the clouds - this should remove the effect from the clouds. By painting with low opacity you have complete control of how much of the effect you undo, low hardness makes the transition between effect and less effect smoother.

If you post your picture in the "Fix me up" section of the forum, I'm sure some of us will have a go at it...

Oh, and welcome to Shuttertalk!

Thanks Guerito for the tips, i'm saving at the moment for the latest Photoshop, so i hope to put some of the techniques learnt here into practice.

I'll post the pics in Fix me up as well.........

If you're on a budget, you could also consider to get Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) or Corel Paintshop Pro X (PSP). Both programs come for a quite reasonable price. I have seen some very professional looking pictures made with PSP... As to PSE, I don't know what exactly the limitations are, but it's interface is very much like PS. Best have a look at the vendor pages and read some reviews...

I like this too. It's a lovely sunset. I think the composition is too static. You have to unbalance it somehow, perhaps by curving it or tilting the horizon. You may want to add a forground silouhette.

Don Schaeffer Wrote:I like this too. It's a lovely sunset. I think the composition is too static. You have to unbalance it somehow, perhaps by curving it or tilting the horizon. You may want to add a forground silouhette.

Don, thanks so much for the observations.......... as i've mentioned earlier, i guess as time goes by my "feel" for a certain shot or moment will become more natural, thus improving the look of a shot. Practice makes perfect so they say

Thats right, SG, keep it up! This is a great shot, but there is a lack of focal point to it. That being said, I'm sure in the future you'll have other shots which need a more dramatic sky, and you'll be able to do a composite with this image.

I can't say much more than what guerito already has. Before I read the following post replies to your shots I thought the same thing. The processing loses the depth to the photo. However, I must say that with sunsets and sunrises I have found that the true beauty can only be seen by the photographer and most of that beauty gets lost in the actual image. We just never see what the photographer did at the time of the picture taking. That said, you captured it well.