When to give up!

[ericmark]

I took a trip on the Welsh Highland Railway which took me into the hills, with some being in the far distance. With a Tamron 18 - 270 mm on a Nikon 7000 I was able to zoom in a fair bit but the hills were still quite a distance away and I had no tripod with me. So the RAW image looked like this. with some work I was able to improve it using CS5 and I arrived at this which although better still not great. So when does one give up and put it in the bin? In the depth of winter when the air is clear likely I would get something better and clearly a tripod would help but unlikely I will return to re-take.

I took one image and changed the colour cast and then another and increased the "Detail" which is Photoshop's name for Local Tone Mapping then used layers and masks to blend them together. Likely there is some easy method I have yet to find so I am all ears.

[Iguanasan]

That's really only a decision you can make and it sounds like you've already made it but maybe I'm wrong.

[Realist]

Well the first one is a bit flat, and the second one looks a bit like an oil painting. Since your profile says "feel free to edit my photos" I whipped up this. I have CS3, and all I did was select auto color, then added a mild warming filter. Took all of a minute, and oddly the auto color can out do what I can sometimes. Not sure if it's better, but it's my suggestion.

[ericmark]

Rather interesting what CS3 has done. In the UK we are never far from the sea and it's always damp unless really cold. So distance shots are always a problem with haze. I have come to the conclusion the use of long lenses to capture distance hills just does not work but I also realise sometimes there just is not the option to walk closer.

So I was experimenting to see what could be done. Photoshop is rather complex and there seems to be a 1000 and 1 ways of getting the same result some easier than others in the main I am lazy and when I open the RAW file I do three things for colour. One click auto, two look for something grey and use white balance dropper and then if that does not work I try manually moving the two colour sliders (temperature and tint) on the main page. However I was getting a blue mountain which they were not. So I went to "HSL / Grayscale" and to "Saturation" tab where there are 8 sliders with these I could remove the blue.

Using the HDR tools and increasing detail did help a little but to me as a record shot of the day great but it would never win any competition so really I working out how was more important than getting this picture A1. Having considered the results I have come to the conclusion for mountains to look good they need to be in the back ground and just not worth zooming in on them. But it is said if you get 32 good images from a role of film your not trying. So I will continue to try and note my failures.

Clearly from your results you feel colours were too strong or at least auto CS3 did and I tend to agree. Mountains are grey and I had over done the colour.

[Marko]

There's only one answer - you must be carrying a tripod with you. Framing gets more precise, smaller apertures become available. It's the most important photography accessory bar none. Yup strong words.
Overall i like your PP here.

[edbayani11]

I don't know if this is an improvement. I used CS2 and used highpass filter and set the blending mode to linear light. and with hue and saturation adjusted the saturation a bit.

[Bambi]

oh this is fun! I like the painterly quality to the image. I would just go with it. Here's my version:

[Realist]

Well it looks like everyone has a different preference to how the picture should look. Interesting.

[Runmonty]

Looks like there are quite few interpretations of this one. I quite like Bambi's.

As chance would have it I just stumbled across this blog post and immediately thought of this thread.

Just thought you may be intersted. How to Take Brilliant Photos on a Cloudy Day

[Runmonty]

Hope you dont mind, but as everyone else was having a go, here's my take.