Hi All
I would really appreciate some serious help with this photo.  My friend took it while over in Western Australia and when I saw it I knew it would be nice to hang on his wall, but I cant get it how I want it.  I would like it to be in the Rich or Mayda style or photo. Any help would be really appreciate.
Cheers Sue

Well, basically you need to pull out the contrast in the shot. Is this what you were thinking of?

Because that was done with a Shadow/Highlight layer -some dodging and burning, and a curves adjustment layer (i straightened the horizon and cropped it as well as putting a warming filter over the beach).

Oh man,thats great! You should fool with the tire tracks on the left to make them disappear. That way. it looks like the truck went as far as the tire tracks go, then was abducted by aliens. 

Good work Bruce.

And don't forget the ship's vapor trail!

Nice adjustments Rich - very crisp!

-Lew ;-)

Well to be honest Sue the texture isnt really coming out in the sand... try burning (i use 2% strength set to shadows) the dark parts of the sand, and then dodging (again i use 2% and set to highlights)... this gives you a nice "pop" to most pictures if you apply it evenly, but when you apply it selectively then you can get more contrast out of it.  Obviously you can use whatever percentage of strength you want, just build up the effect with multiple passes on a new layer and switch back and forth from the original so you can see where you have come from and where you want to go.

Another trick is to use USM on a huge radius setting to increase local contrasts - try 10% 60px and a threshold of around 0-5 and play with it unti lyou get the desired effect.

Geerts version is basically what i was trying for, i would say a happy medium between mine and his would be just fine imo... mine is a little too "bland" and i'm sure he wont mind me saying but his has knocked the colour off the shrubs on the right and made them black with the lighter sand underneath gone white.  Although it depends on your own tastes - the higher contrast there might be something you like :)  If i am looking at the colouring right i think he put a sepia filter over the top of the whole image to warm it and give the sky that deeper blue colour.  Have a play with things like that - and remember if you do it all on a duplicate layer, then go all out and extreme with it, you can always reduce the opacity of the layer to blend with the original thus toning the effect down slightly.

Hey Thanks guys for the help!  hope you had a bit of fun playing with it!  I'll give your advice a try Rich and see what I can do with it,,,
Sue

Rich, thanks for the advice on dodge and burn. It has taken me long enough to get the two straight even having watched my dad do that years ago in the basement darkroom.

I have overworked those tools, using too much exposure or too large a percent.  I see the low % makes for a very subtle approach and though more time intensive will lead to better use of those tools. You see, your comments have helped me, too.   Thanks for that.      Tom.

PS. have you used a sponge tool for saturation with the process? IM or post here if you care to comment.

No problem Tom - i'm just passing on knowledge i learned from someone else :)

As for the sponge tool/"saturation with the process", there is an interesting side effect of using the dodge and burn tools - it alters the colours as well as the luminosity so if you wanted to just affect the luminosity(monochromatic contrast), just change the blend mode on the layer you are dodge/burning to "Luminosity", (always dodge and burn on a duplicate layer) - flick back to "Normal" blend mode to see the change in colours.  Personally i like the effect it has on things when dealing with some subject types (landscape colours seem to pop with the effect).

As for the Sponge in particular - i havent really used it much... sometimes when there is a colour cast on a piece of white but i like the colour cast on the rest of the image i would use it rather than mask a saturation layer, but apart from that i dont use the Sponge tool. For largescale selective desaturation it is easier and quicker to use a saturation layer and masking.

Hi Guys,

Some interesting info here.

I've got one for you to try re the sponge .
I found this accidently when I was working on a girls hair highlights last night when my hand threw a wobbly and the sponge went zipping across the blue sky. Hey whats this I said looking closer at the trail it left.....no more noise.
So I upped the size of the sponge and I did the whole sky, the result was amazing. So if you have large noisy surfaces like the sky used in the above photo give it a shot I'm sure you will be pleasently surprised. Before this I was using the Blur tool to do the same thing but the result was no way as good as the sponge. Oh yeah I tried it on an inside wall today and it worked again. Pity painting the house isn't that easy lol
Hey do I get a spotters fee for this ?? lol

Cheers
Peter
PS: Staff, maybe I should post this on another part of this forum??

Hey Sue you should have let me know you were coming to WA . Could have taken you to some great spots :-)

I'll have to give that a go next time i have noise around thanks for the tip.  And no - keeping in this thread is fine, photoshop is a photographers tool as well - so photography forum is where it should be and this thread is all about that.  And if you have any other tips for photographers in the future feel free to share them - we are a community and there are people here who want to learn to improve their photography whether that be taking the picture or, like in this thread, in postwork :)

Thanks Rich will do.
I have learnt a lot myself from this site.
You guys do a gr8 job!!

Peter

Any good free ones around :-) I'm still a little adverse in sending banking details over the net!!

Neat Image has a free version you can use on "web sized" images.