I've been having some fun with LR3 and Color Efex, and I've used them to tackle a photo I've been struggling with for a while now. It's a shot from a tall building at my university, and it shows my hometown of Rotterdam, just before it's enveloped in fog (10 minutes later, I couldn't see anything out the window anymore).
In the original, the foreground is too dark for my liking (also holds much less detail than what was visible with the naked eye), but when I lifted the shadows, the fog also disappeared. I've tried to rectify this by using local tonal contrast, combined with a graduated fog filter in Color Efex, but I don't know if it still looks believable... it has a bit of an "overdone HDR" feel about it, I'm afraid...
Here's the original:
and this is what I made of it now:
please note it was shot through a very dirty window so there'll always be some smudges here and there, particularly in the trees in the foreground.
In the original, the foreground is too dark for my liking (also holds much less detail than what was visible with the naked eye), but when I lifted the shadows, the fog also disappeared. I've tried to rectify this by using local tonal contrast, combined with a graduated fog filter in Color Efex, but I don't know if it still looks believable... it has a bit of an "overdone HDR" feel about it, I'm afraid...
Here's the original:
and this is what I made of it now:
please note it was shot through a very dirty window so there'll always be some smudges here and there, particularly in the trees in the foreground.