Curvemeister Forum

It's wintertime here in South Africa and allmost all the green is gone. This is a picture of Sani pass, a route between Kwa Zulu Natal and Le Sotho. This was taken from the top, back towards towards the Natal midlands. My problem is the snow, I keep on ending with gray in the snow and I'm trying not to blow the highlights out. I guess its ok to have a little blue cast in the shadows, but it is especially  when I want to do a PPW (the CM way) that the weels come off; I just cannot get it to look normal. This was taken a while ago and the rocks are definately more red.  Perhaps you boffins (experts) out there can give me advice. Thanks

I need to spend more time; the righthand side looks ok, but disaster in the snow and the sky, the clouds are too yellow and a green appaerance left side

Are you looking for something like this??

Ganna it looks like you are fighting too hard for the shadow side of the snow. 
It is a stark contrast but one that you need not even out in this frame.
I also did not find as much red in the dirt as you.  Was the scene more reddish than I am getting from the original image??
There is a lot of color and Jpeg noise in the lower clouds so forgive the odd color in there...I did measure them as blue rather than the reddish magenta color the web is showing me after posting.

Greg

I think some images are too far off. This was taken as a jpeg. I tried the "Bigger hammer" approach to open the shadows and then ruined the snow.  This is not a particularly important image, but I used it to see to what extend one can zoop it up ;)  It was taken about six years ago with a 8 mp camera when the sun was high, therefor the harh shadows. Thanks a lot for the the reply.  Dan's "there are no bad originals" is not always a bulls eye  :D

Well even Dan admits that...

I would say set your goals and work to those rather than an arbitrary destination.  You need to decide what you want from the image and go after that.  If you wanted to see how to save the snow It would require a mask to protect parts of the image that do not need the adjustment you are placing on the image.

Greg

Greg, here is a HDR image (had to shrink it for website). Still have aproblem with the snow; it looks dirty. Am I trying to get too much detail out of it? This image is out of Photomatix pro and I've just converted it from tiff to jpeg and smaller. Seems that snow is getting the better of me.  :P

Try something like this...
The Darker snow areas are shadow...You can push it even harder if you want but the "golden" color is interesting...Esp if the clouds keep some of the color.
Greg

Thanks a lot