A muted fall image for openers...

[ggroess]

Onward....

Next I will increase the contrast further in the L channel of LAB this has multiple effects.

• It increases the contrast


• It add some sharpness to the edges of the leaves.


• It allows me to increase the saturation further without blowing out the colors on the leaves.

The way that I increase the contrast was to use a "Contrast Pin"  the contrast pin is created by hovering the mouse over the image until you find an area that has a long color worm. You then right click on the image at that point and select Contrast Pin from the menu.

Here is an article about the color worms
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Color_Worms

The next step is to place the mouse in the frame of the curve window below the grid right in the 75-50 numbers.  Your mouse will turn to a double arrow and you can adjust the contrast.

Here is a article on Contrast Pins
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Contrast_Pinning

After adjusting the contrast a bit you can increase the saturation using the slider some more.  The saturation values in the box in my screen shot are "false" because I had to close CM and reopen it during the process of creating these screen shots.  Yours will be different unless you also close CM and come back in.

This basic sharpening and saturation increase have a dramatic effect on the image.

Greg

[derekfountain]

This basic sharpening and saturation increase have a dramatic effect on the image.

Not that I want to nit pick, but the remaining problem with your image is that the leaves in the foreground aren't in any way isolated from those in the background. It's a large colourful blob which leaves the eye nowhere to home in on. IMHO. :)

I've been very impressed with the subtle yet effective method used in Chapter 12 of the LAB book to break close colours apart. I thought this image benefited from that.

[ggroess]

Ahhh..but I am not yet done....

Today was going to be the Drama part....stay tuned....

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Sorry I could not join in earlier - here is my 2d worth (for those that know what that means!)

7 pixels of local contrast -> CM lab curve -> 2 pixels of Focus Magic + a touch of Man from Mars (by just doing Equalize on each channel!)

However I think I've over done it as usual - so I prefer a touch of blurring to frame it

[ggroess]

Stylish yet over stated...
I like the heavey handed approach to this...I wanted you guys to push it around since in real life it was tremendously colorful.

You may have gone too far but in a good way...
Greg

[ggroess]

Here is where I took this image....It is up to you to deciede what you want to do with your version...
Please post.  there are no wrong answers at this point.

Using Curvemeister, unsharp, a bit of Gaussian Blur, and a slight levels adjustment to the blur mask.

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

To try to show some of the flexibility of the "Jacob's Ladder" approach, I put up a pair of screenshots:





These show what kind of difference it can make to move a single control point in one of the curves established by that method. (Note I don't particularly like either one, and would make this curve look significantly different in an ideal edit; I just wanted to show the contrast between them)

[mikemeister_admin]

Here's one way it could be done.  I think it might be improved even further with some enhancement of local contrast using the unsharp mask tool at various radii.

[mikemeister_admin]

Learning some  blending modes then a final tweak in CM for the yellow.Wanted to keep branch as natural as possible

[derekfountain]

This thing this shows off best is the separation of colours. Look at how the centre leaf now stands out from the similarly coloured leaves of the background.

Apart from a brief play some weeks ago I've avoided the Jacob's Ladder approach because I couldn't see how it worked, and therefore couldn't predict how it would behave or how I would use it to fix identified problems. No doubt it's a powerful technique though.