I took a stab at it, but its not an easy correction. If you were shooting in matrix metering mode this photo you should have been shooting at maybe -1ev and braketing. These are really tough shots to take, so its alway good to rip off as many as you can. Look at the histogram. Its got a spike on the dark end and a spike on the light end. Very difficult.
The lightest part of the sky is totally blown out which makes it difficult to correct. Blowouts are the hardest for me to correct. I assume that the blown out part of the sky was blue sky, but in any case I decided to treat it as clouds.
Also I did this with psp8.
To do this you make a duplicate layer.
You can change the opacity of the top layer as you wish. You could use mild colors and you 90-100% opacity or use very strong colors on the top layer and use maybe 50% opacity.
Remember all of your work is on the top layer and the original underneath is untouched.
Select the lower section with the majic wand, its easy because it such a high contrast shot. Delete the lower dark section. Invert the selection so the top half is selected. Now you can just work on the sky.
It helps to turn off the lower layer so you can see only the top sky layer.
This is almost all psp8 airbrush work. I tried several other methods, but for me this would be the fastest.
Since the light area is totally blown out, you need some sort of color in the blown out white areas.
Huge brush, Yellow, opacity +-3, hardness 30-40, until you get it where you want it.
Then touch up the rest of the clouds using yellow, orange, red, purple. Skys this late in the day are usually purplish close to the horizon. The bottoms of clouds are also purplish. I think the sky blowout caused a loss in color in this photo. Was the sky more purplish orange ?
That got me close on the sky. But the water was also a part of this selection and lost some contrast, so I used the burn tool with the limit set on shadow to give the waves more contrast. I also did a bit of that to the sky. At this point go back and forth and view both layers together. At the end you can leave it layered or merge it into a single layer jpeg.
Now that I look at it again I think it needs more purple in it. You could work on these kind of images forever.
I am not sure if you could do this with ps elements. If not get hold of an old copy of ps or psp, or a trial version and try it out.
I reduced the image to 1040x_ to make it easier to work on.
Try it out on the full size file.
It also helps to have a Wacom pen tablet.
I loved this in the lcd but was dissappointed once I got it home.
Here is an unedited version.
It just lacks pop and being at ISO 800 has some noise. I want the
colors more vibrant but I would love to keep the detail in the
water spray. If the seagulls and rock are silhouetted that's ok.
I've messed with it but can't seem to make it work. Can anybody
teach me how to improve/salvage this image? I use PS elements. I
also have neat image but have never been very good with it. Thanks
in advance! Cindy
full res original image can be found here:
http://www.pbase.com/image/19903620/original
--
CindyD or SarahD
If one of us is laughing, and the other one isn't, one of us must
be wrong...
It is a really fine image to work with and a splendid capture. I really like those frozen globules of water.
