Autumn is on it's way! Some nice waterfall pictures too.

I decided on this post I would share some of the photoshop methods I use to get the results. I use photoshop CS2.

This has very little post processing into it. It was very foggy and I knew that it was just about the exact look I wanted. The only thing I added was a curves adjustment layer, and in RGB channel just made a point in the center of the line and pulled it to the left to enhance the midtones a bit. I normally want contrasty images but this I needed to preserve its washy appearance.

This is an HDR image. I composited three exposures with EV values +2, 0, -2. I don't remember the aperture/shutter speed but most likely it was F9 1/160.

I tone mapped it using DPHDR, then brought it into photoshop and masked various parts of the trees into separate layers, giving each layer a different S curve on the RGB channel. I always use Neat Image noise reduction on my HDR skies, mostly luminance reduction.

I originally shot 5 different exposures on this, planning for an HDR composite. I really wanted to give the basin area a darker look than the sky, so I instead went with only using the -2 EV shot, and brought out the highlights using a duplicate layer shadow/highlight command at 100%. The colors were still pretty vivid, so I had to mute them changing the curve in the Green channel. The sky is so vivid mainly due to a polarising filter.



Using channel mixer, I set to monochrome and pushed the reds up highest, greens negative and blues slightly postive, making sure to retain a 100% mix so as not to oversaturate anything. Then a quick adjustment layer in curves with a slight S curve. (quick tip, drag the mouse over the areas you want accentuated, and see where the range is on the curve. Then steepen only that section of the curve. If you need more drastic change within a certain area, I always mask off the section and apply curves directly to it alone.


This one was really time consuming. A lot of curves work and masks. every color you see here was masked off and worked on with curves. I added an overall light green color cast but kept good contrast range within the tree shadows and the leaves.