Week 2: Exercise 7 - Water

[mikemeister_admin]

I know that we've moved onto week 3, but I'd hate not to attempt every exercise on the course - I'm learning so much on each correction I make (either in CM manipulating the curves, or here on the forum in the critiques). So, that being said, even though these images are late in being uploaded, I want to post them. I haven't had a look at the solutions for this (or the temple image - which I'll post in a minute), so I'll soon see if these were approached well  ;)

For this correction I tried both Lab and RGB (as suggested), and preferred the way that the image responded in Lab.

I began by setting shadow and highlight thresholds, and then set my neutral. I decided that the safest place to 'go shopping' for a neutral was the bright foam in the water. I had to move the neutral point around a fair bit to settle on colour I was happy with, but the neutral I chose (and the subsequent saturation slider adjustment) made me realise that the dark mud I was considering would have been a poor choice!

I'll just post exercise 8 and then I'll check the solutions  ;)

Cheers,
Lee.

[ggroess]

Good choices...really...how about some color....??

Greg

[leeharper_admin]

I know - I just saw that Mike moved the saturation slider to 2.60!

I think that I prefer the colours of these rocks a little more subdued though. Without having been there I can only guess what the colours would have looked like, and in my part of the world I'm not used to seeing rocks quite that vivid  :). I do think that the extra colour looks really great when you are zoomed in tightly on one of the rocks (as in the video), but because the water is so drab having dull water and colourful rocks looks a little odd to me.

In terms of contrast, I applied an s-curve, which I followed up with some Hiroloam sharpening - but I can see from the solution that a straight s-curve would have wiped out a lot of detail in the brighter rocks. I will be less careless next time  ;)

Lee.