Overdone?

[Ken Rogers]

This is Vancouver BC, taken from the air 10 miles away. Many of my aerials seem rather washed out with blue. I'm not really sure why this is. Do I need a polarization filter or something? (Photographer I am not.).

I created 5 layers, each masked with a soft brush. This way I could individually work on the sky, the mountains, the smog, the city and the water. I added some blue to the sky, much red and yellow to the mountains, and I applied auto-color to the city (at a reduced opacity). I doubt I can really do anything about the smog. It's there.

I might print a 16x20 poster for a friend. Not quite enough pixels (the full-size is about 2560x1920 but that's OK with me). I'd appreciate your critiques. What else can I do to this picture? Should I be doing less? Would you like to have a go at it?

Ken

[Photo678]

nahh, i think you did a pretty good job with it. My only issue is that the highliights in the buildings have too much yellow in them....which is understandable because you needed to add yellow to tone down the blue....try going into "selective color" and reducing the yellow in the yellow channel, and reducing the black....you should be dead on then.

[Kraellin]

and ken, yes, adding a polarization or uv filter to the camera would help this particular problem when shooting.

Craig

[Ken Rogers]

Many thanks!

Ken

[Ian W]

I think you've done well to bring the city out from the mist here. The detail in the distance is probably as good as you can get from this image. Job done I'd say.

Ian.

[dmrdm]

Since the ship at the bottom is only half there, I might crop the photo and resize or even clone over it. If you crop it might look nice to get a closer view of the buildings. One never knows until one plays with several versions though. Have fun.

[philbach]

I guess it would help if I was in the plane when the picture was taken. But it looks to me that the photo was taken late in the afternoon which would add a golden tone to the color. I agree that cloning out the ship in the lower right foreground would be helpful. Maybe selective sharpening to the buildings would help too. Maybe not. Nice work.

[Ken Rogers]

The selective sharpening of the buildings worked very well (too much?). I created yet another masked layer so I could brush in the unsharp mask effect, and I even added some along the mountain peaks. I also color-balanced out some of the yellow from the buildings. Lastly, I stamped out the freighter.

Thanks for all tips.

Ken

[philbach]

I think you've made a real improvement, Ken. Nice work.

[Kraellin]

i agree with phil. that looks better.

Craig