Need help - photographs on dull days

[DianeK]

dirtcastle's version gets my vote.

[Jim Saunders]

In LR4 I applied brushstrokes as follows:

To the sky: Temp -21, exp -.6, contrast +55, shadows -50

To the horse & rider: Exp +.1, shadows +25, saturation +20, sharpness +30, noise +50.

Globally, temp 5200, tint +2, clarity/vibrance/saturation +5, sharpening +30, NR luminance +20, enable lens correction.

The sky/tree interface looks a little rough because I used the auto-mask for the sake of speed.

Jim - Long time listener, first time caller.

[Mark1]

Personally I would like to see how this image would have come out with a polarising filter over the lens. Yes you need to speed things up due to the light loss but it doesn't look like lack of light would be a problem in this case. It's not actually a bad image considering the bright background and dark colours of the subject - it needs straightening and cropping more than anything. Try a polariser next time?

All the editing seems to do is render the sky unnaturally.

[Tabor Warren Photography]

I was a big fan of fotofool's version, but here is my own.


In Camera Raw 6.6 via PS CS5

Temp: 5000 Tint +10
Dropped the exposure a touch
Increased the blacks and brightness
Dropped the contrast
Increased the clarity (+25)
Dropped the vibrance a tad (-2)

Cranked the highlights (+100)
Adjusted the  remainig sliders a tiny bit

Dropped green saturation to -30

Applied a vignette -18 amount with a midpoint at 75 and roundness at -35

Other than that I didn't do anything! lol

Really it only took ~7 minutes which is about 5 minutes over what I typically do, however, I really enjoyed playing with this one.

Shout out to fotofool for inspiration to dropped the greens, I really like that effect for this type of photo.

Hope this helps,
-Tabor

[Northstar]

I'm not that great at PP, but I'll give it a try because I need practice 

[Viggo]

Use a few underexposure gradients leaving your subject the brightest, that can solve some of it.

@Dirtcastle: Sweeet!

[smithy]

There are a couple of commonly-used rules when it comes to shooting on overcast days:

1.  Avoid the sky as much as possible - use the overcast conditions as an opportunity to have a giant 'diffuser' in your lighting arsenal.  Obviously that's not always going to work for an action shot where you'd like some background, etc, so we'll move on.

2.  Use black and white.  That's what I've done here.  Using Photoshop CS4, I first cloned out that rail in the foreground.  Then I rotated (levelling the horizon) and cropped it - the classic 1/3 layout (nothing original there, but it works).  Then levels (just using auto, with clipping disabled).  Then black and white conversion, setting the colour conversion to occur in a way that brings the subjects' details out (the horse's head, the rider's jacket, etc).  Then I did a very gentle 20% burn on the sky - you never want to overdo this, otherwise it looks nasty.  Then a couple of little dodges here and there.  Reduced to 25% size for posting here, and a very gentle unsharp mask and a couple of little sharpens (with the brush) here and there.

Before I did the B&W conversion, it looked okay, but I think it really pops in greyscale. 

Note:  it looks way better in Photoshop than in a browser or Windows Photo Viewer.

[westr70]

Wow, I use lightroom 4 all the time but I got a few lessons from these examples.  This is a great learning tool.

[dirtcastle]

I find that getting colors right is the most difficult part of post production. I can almost always get the exposure, contrast, and composition right. But I am rarely satisfied with the colors. My edit here is no exception.

When you have a photo like this, with unappealing colors SOOC, it is tempting to immediately go B&W without trying to do it in color. But I believe every photo can have its colors improved.

Alas, there is rarely a silver bullet for color. I find that getting colors right often requires every tool in the LR kit.

[Tabor Warren Photography]

I really like how many different views there are on how the end image could look. This is definitely one of my favorite posts.

-Tabor

[dirtcastle]

Here's a B&W edit with Lightroom.

[Canihaspicture]

Ok, I'm bored too.

[Narcolepsy]

Having carefully looked at everyone's fantastic edits, and using them for inspiration - I tried myself
This was done with Aperture and NikSoft

I would appreciate honest opinions
Thanks

[matt2491]

Looks good man. Has a little punch but stays smooth & clean.