# Beach, summer, sunset



## iAstonish (Jul 6, 2010)




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## Hartley (Jul 7, 2010)

Nice sunset colors, and the pale white buildings are a nice contrast but the large area of dark ground in the center is distracting at best.  Maybe it's my monitor, but while there is a suggestion of texture, it is very indistinct.

  Maybe if you cropped it up a bit?  That would include the interesting buildings and the nice sunset without the big dark..

Edit to add:  what do you think of your Sigma 18-250?  I've been looking at that one.


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## dak1b (Jul 7, 2010)

ya i agree with ^^^^^ the dark area kills it for me.


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## iAstonish (Jul 8, 2010)

You guys wanna upload a crop for me? I have a few ideas now that you mention it, but would appreciate to see your views as well.

Thanks for the help and compliments. I'm going to experiment with a few crops on it.


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## iAstonish (Jul 8, 2010)

Was this what you had in mind, or something different?


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## Hartley (Jul 8, 2010)

I think you're close - here's what I did - note that I lightened up the remaining foreground a little as well..






  FWIW, this looks more like "end of summer" or maybe "summer sunrise" because of the general lack of people..

Hartley


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## pk1 (Jul 8, 2010)

Just wondering, what everyone thinks the best beach in the world would be?


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## GooseEgg (Jul 9, 2010)

I like the last edit that you did.  Maybe a little lighter though...Hartley did a good job in my opinion.


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## GooseEgg (Jul 9, 2010)

and what the heck pk1...did you just try to jack the thread


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## iAstonish (Jul 9, 2010)

Hartley said:


> I think you're close - here's what I did - note that I lightened up the remaining foreground a little as well..
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks Hartley, that looks great! What did you do to lighten the rocks? I don't really do much post editing, so I would appreciate learning.


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## Hartley (Jul 9, 2010)

Hi,

  I use PSE (Photoshop Elements) 8 - cheap, and more power than I can handle at the moment..

  I loaded your picture, cropped it, then under "Enhance" I clicked on "Adjust lighting" then "Shadows/Highlights".  Moving the Lighten Shadows" slider to the right lightens up all the dark areas (within the limits of the image, of course!).  I also ran up the "midtone contrast" a little, though I notice I overdid it a bit because there is a little "glow" over the trees the sun is hiding behind..

  If you don't have Elements, you will want it or something like it eventually - I understand that there are other good, inexpensive editors, tho I think that Elements is the 900-pound gorilla of that world, at least for Windows.  I suspect there are similar controls in all of them.

  Whatever you have or get, consider buying a book for it as well, as NONE of them seem to come with a decent manual.  I bought one of the "Missing Manual" series for Elements, and it lived next to the throne for a while so I would read it every chance I got..  Then pick some photos and play with them - as long as you don't forget to NOT overwrite your original, you can't hurt anything. :mrgreen:

Hartley


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## iAstonish (Jul 10, 2010)

Hartley said:


> Hi,
> 
> I use PSE (Photoshop Elements) 8 - cheap, and more power than I can handle at the moment..
> 
> ...



Well I learned on the newest version of photoshop at school, but it's pretty expensive. Right now I'm just using GIMP, which was free to download, but might purchase adobe lightroom or something similar.

Again, thanks for the tips. The crop looks awesome as well, I used it on my flickr. 

:thumbup:


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