A Little Before Moonset at Sunrise (added version 2)

Taken a few minutes before Moonset at Sunrise, this image of McHenrys Peak offers some context. It was done with similar processing.

Version 2

Best regards and thanks again for looking. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi ScottO,

Your image caught my eye as I was scanning through the posts.

You’ve captured a wonderful scene. And, great textures!

I was intrigued to see that you chose to interpret the BW tonality as very consistent and barely altering throughout the entire image. Gives it sort of an old-timey. Carleton Watkins kind of a gestalt to me…

It made me think of one of the exercises one of the photo clubs I belong to gives us from time to time. They’ll say, “Here’s a base image. Now everyone interpret it in your own way.” It’s always interesting to see how different people re-imagine the same image from their own perspectives.

Well, I hope you don’t mind but your photo was one I liked and felt inspired to try that exercise with. I made a snip of it. Pulled it into the Topaz BW Effects plugin. Tried to achieve an Ansel Adams sorta look with it there. Then masked out some of the areas and added a bit of vignette around the edges.

Anyway, thanks for inspiring me to try some new techniques with your very nice landscape shot! See my experiment attached…

Fotomaker-ReinterpTopazBWFx_Scotto-BWpeak

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Not at all; I’m glad you enjoyed working on the image. :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m hoping to get some time to make some additional adjustments to the image. For one, I would like to get the contrast between the sky and the mountain a bit stronger with a darker sky. That may require going back to the color version for some tweaks and a re-conversion to B&W. I have to be careful though, as this image is from my 6MP D40, and so requires a bit more caution to avoid halos along the edges and tonal banding in the sky - something I’ve had to deal with when attempting to get that dark, Ansel Adams-like sky. Though the issue is way worse in my even older Fuji S5000. :open_mouth: And there are a few local lighting and contrast adjustments I’d like to try as well.

Best regards

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Phew!

Have you tried (or do you own) some of Topaz’s newer AI products?

What I’m thinking of is try running your 6mp image thru DeNoise AI (to reduce low mp jpg artifacts) then thru Gigapixel AI (to scale it up) 1st. Don’t apply any sharpening yet. Then do your BW conversion and any creative techniques you want to play with. Finish up with a light touch of sharpening or contrast (in that type of scene, with what I assume was a pure blue sky - no clouds - as you know you can end up with halo-ing along the edges of the peaks if you go too crazy with either contrast or sharpness).

I love trying different looks & crops on my own pics. Have fun! If you don’t own the prods I mentioned, you can trial free for a month (no watermarks).

I got to spend some more time on this image and darkened the sky more to my liking while brightening up the ridge on the right to increase its contrast to the sky. And some other tweaks. A work in progress I guess…

The updated version is in the original post so it’s easy to compare.

Yes it was. In LR, I increased the saturation of the sky just a little so it would react more to the color sensitivity sliders in B&W Effects. This way the sky started out darker, and the sliders didn’t have to moved very far to get the desired result.

They’re both well done. But if I had to pick one, I’d pick the 2nd one. You kept it realistic looking so it looks like a masterful straight out of the camera shot. With just the right amt of tonal differentiation and contrast. You know what you’re doing!! :+1::clap:

Yes, I learned (the hard way) that increasing saturation when planning to do BW conversions helps a lot.

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