[guerito]

Taken two days ago, on the way home. The weather is mostly ugly here at this time of the year, but sometimes the sky opens up...

[Rufus]

Hmmm,

What is the haze around the buildings?

[guerito]

Hmm you caught me! I tried to light these areas up by applying a soft light layer in Paintshop. Looked ok on my monitor until right now, when I tuned the brightness up to 100%. Oops! Here is the pic again without the bloody layer:



I really need to find out more about image enhancement. Ideas as to what to do with this picture are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Don Schaeffer]

Nice photo. I saw what you did right away. You just need a little more precision in using your brushes. Try the trick of using the cut-out tool, just lightening the cut-out part, copying the lightened cut-out to the buffer. Then re-pasting it over the original. (Actually I use Photosuite 4 for that. It works much better than Photoshop).

--Don

[Toad]

I like what you did with the lightening of the buildings - it looks very eery. I agree that a little more precision with the technique is in order - but it is definately the right direction - looks good.

[Rufus]

I confess that I went a bit mad with this. Hope you dont mind too much. It's all a bit red uptop now!!!!

[Toad]

...or a somewhat more subtle approach...btw: sorry for messing with your photo unasked...

[guerito]

Wow! No need for apologies, it looks great! I wouldn't call it "messing" either...

Thanks, Don and Toad! I will give it another try then - with more precision.

[Toad]

You're welcome. It's a great shot.

For the record (Photoshop CS):

- select black area at the bottom of the original photo with magic wand
- feather selection 2 px.
- lighten the selected area with levels to the church level of lightness
- use history brush to "paint" the original black into the trees
- saturate the whole photo about 17%
- unsharpen mask - 20, 3 0

[Rufus]

I'm not hurt

[StudioJ]

The buildings look very Harry Potteresque!

[slejhamer]

The buildings look very Harry Potteresque!

That's what I was thinking!

Actually I kinda like the foggy look to the original, though the retouches are very good too.

[shuttertalk]

Hey guerito... I like the shot, and your attempt too... at first it thought it was fog/smoke from the chimney

But the colour is wonderful - the sky really complements the colour of the buildings.