Fall 2006, Rt. 40, Charlotte County, VA

[BLR]

I took this through the windshield of my car and later was pleased with what I could do with it.

Nikon D200, 18-200 mm, autofocus, shutter priority, ISO 180, f4.5, 44 mm (66 mm equivalent).

What I did: Cropped. Saved sky as a separate layer so it wouldn't be washed out by Levels adjustment. Set white point with eyedropper from Levels tool by selecting white line at road edge. Set black point similarly with underbrush. Set midpoint with grey of road surface. Retouched glare in trees with clone stamp. Added sky layer back in. Sharpened.

Please let me know what you think and what you would have done differently. Thanks.

[palms1]

Personaly i think it looks great

PAlms

[JimJam]

That looks very good BLR. What would I have done different? Maybe take out the power lines and poles and add a different sky. But knowing me like I do , most likely not.

[Steve Conway]

Originally Posted by palms1

Personaly i think it looks great

PAlms

I'll certainly second that motion!

And I thought I was the only one who shot photos thru windows and windshields.

Steve C.

[stosh7]

I also treated the sky differently. First I rebalanced the whites by duping the image, average blur, Invert and adjust opacity so the white line is white. Then I did a levels adjustment to bring up the sky, inverted the layer mask and painted the sky back in. Then curve layer for end points and contrast, hue and saturation layer to give it more punch and selective color to adjust the reds, yellows and greens. high pass filter and unsharp mask brought me to my best effort, below.

Then, take out those pesky power lines ....

How do you like it so far?

Stosh

[BLR]

Thanks. It's very nice. I'll have to study your description, since my PS skills aren't well developed yet.

[Kraellin]

blr, welcome to RP.

since you say your ps skills arent well developed yet, i dont know if you're ready for masks or not yet. but, if you are, you might consider using an inverted 'luminance mask' on your image first. this will save you having to set the sky as a separate layer. the inverted luminance mask will mask that portion out so that you can work on the rest of the image.

and by the way, i do give you credit for recognizing that the sky needed to be handled differently than the rest of the image. levels and curves and so on would have washed the sky out while you were working on the rest of the darker parts.

here's a screenshot of my result that also shows the layers i used.

edit: hehe, with a 40% compression to get this image uploaded, things dont quite look as good as they did in psp, but it's good enough to show as an example. you could still do your black and white points like you did in your image and get even better results, perhaps. (the road, for example, looks a little too blue and green in mine now.)

[BLR]

Craig,

Thanks for the suggestions and the steps. I'll work through them when I get a chance. Actually, I didn't recognize in advance that the sky would require special treatment. When it washed out during experimentation with Levels adjustments, I realized there was a problem.

[maureeno]

Originally Posted by BLR

I took this through the windshield of my car and later was pleased with what I could do with it.

Nikon D200, 18-200 mm, autofocus, shutter priority, ISO 180, f4.5, 44 mm (66 mm equivalent).

What I did: Cropped. Saved sky as a separate layer so it wouldn't be washed out by Levels adjustment. Set white point with eyedropper from Levels tool by selecting white line at road edge. Set black point similarly with underbrush. Set midpoint with grey of road surface. Retouched glare in trees with clone stamp. Added sky layer back in. Sharpened.

Please let me know what you think and what you would have done differently. Thanks.

It's beautiful, BLR! I also shoot through the windscreen (if it's clean!) and have got some good shots that way.

This area looks like a stretch I love that runs from Millboro to Warm Springs.

Maureen