More From Santa Cruz

[maddogmurph]

Almost feel like posting the other four, hard to narrow these down, also looking for advice on fixing glare spot on #2, tried the spot heal, and some color balance to little avail.

[Chris Calohan]

sent you a PM - in addition to message contents, I'd back off on the sharpening significantly as well as the saturation sliders.

[luxborealis]

Dark and forbidding despite the sunrise/sunset and colours. It looks like you're taking a page from Michael's book about keeping things dark My feeling is, they would benefit from having more detail in the shadows.

Not sure what you mean about the "glare" in #2. If you mean the "rays" directed downwards from the sun - I would leave them in. They look more natural than the "starburst" filters, so, to me anyway, they "work".

Wonderful location. Great cliffs. Water movement is wonderful.

[maddogmurph]

You know it's funny, I sometimes run things through perfectly clear, and that's exactly what the program did (lighten up the shadows), for some reason I liked the shadows.  I actually didn't sharpen these at all Chris, but I may have gone overboard on Clarity.  But I think you're right, I've definitely come in heavy on these, probably too heavy, I was concerned about the halo around the sun.  What I was trying to do is make the contrast in the clouds come out because I didn't use a Grad, I was on a 1.2ND HD tiffen, which I'm much happier with than my Vari ND from Singh Ray that completely ruined a set of photos at point of the arches I'll put some more work into these and post again when I get a chance.

[Bob_B]

...I was on a 1.2ND HD tiffen, which I'm much happier with than my Vari ND from Singh Ray that completely ruined a set of photos...

Agreed with the variable ND from SR: really can't be used on lenses wider than 50 mm.

   Bob

[Arlen]

Those are some very dramatic scenes. As to the glare spot on #2, if what I'm seeing is what you're referring to, it's not that noticeable. But if you want to remove it and it's resistant to spot healing, you could try using the patch tool.

[stamper]

Number 1 for me and the other 3 are worthy. Personally speaking the shadows are fine. I expect to see blocky shadows in a sunset image. When posting to the web I find the conversion tends to underexpose an image slightly and it is difficult to control.

[stamper]

Those are some very dramatic scenes. As to the glare spot on #2, if what I'm seeing is what you're referring to, it's not that noticeable. But if you want to remove it and it's resistant to spot healing, you could try using the patch tool.

I saw it too but only because you mentioned it. I would leave it because it would be hard to remove and only a picky person would mention it.

[Chris Calohan]

He mentioned it first, and it was a simple edit to fix. It looks better fixed.

[KMRennie]

Fixing flare etc in #2. Firstly I like all of the images.
My solution and I like the complicated is to create a new layer and with the clone tool set to current and below on the new empty layer alt click yo the side of the offending are and draw over the bit that you want to remove. Don't worry if you go over a bit that you want to preserve. When you have removed all of the offending things creat a mask and mask out the cloned bits to reveal in this instance the sun. It sound complicated but isn't. Sometimes I have multiple cloned layers. The beauty of separate layers is that you can move them, decrease the opacity, mask out bits of them and you don't wreck the image underneath. I hope that this helps.
Ken

[davidh202]

I like them all.
As far as the flare in #2...easy and simplistic fix  that I use often. Since that entire ridge is in shadow, I took the image into the ACR adjustment brush,(luv it!),  de saturated across the entire shadowed area added a little contrast ,and lowered the shadows adjustment at the same time. It doesn't totally eliminate the flares but it does serve to make the flares much less obvious and intrusive ;-)  
David

[Chris Calohan]

I did pretty much the same as the others only used a layer and a 29% cloning brush, thus sneaking up on the selection rather than heavy handing it. I did mask both sides of the crevasse then inverted the selection so I could work the brush without fear of overlap. I also adjusted the slight tilt of the horizon to level.

[Arlen]

The original version of #2 looks fine to me. As I mentioned above, the glare spot is not very noticeable, and I agree with Stamper that only a picky person would be bothered by it. But since you asked about removing it, and you have gotten several good responses from the other guys, I will add the results of using Photoshop's patch tool, which took about 45 seconds. In different situations you may find that one or the other of various approaches is most appropriate for such a task. I only edited the spot that I think you asked about, and didn't modify anything else--including some fainter spots to the right.

[Bob_B]

Other than the horizon, I really can't see a difference between Chris' and Arlen's processing. Quite interesting, as they appear to have answered the problem with different methods. I appreciate learning these various ways to correct flare!

[Arlen]

I like seeing the different methods, too. On close examination it appears to me that Chris also took out the hard-to-see fainter spots to the right of the bright one. (So faint that you probably don't notice they've been removed unless you are specifically looking for them.) Those could also be easily removed with the patch tool. There are some situations where it's more difficult to use the patch tool successfully, though. You need to have a source area to draw from that is a reasonable match to the area you want to patch, or that at least any difference won't be noticeable. In this case the source that I used was right above the patched area, so that the wispy falling water could be matched and preserved.

[Chris Calohan]

Like the 50 ways to leave your lover, there are a zillion ways to use Photoshop. When it is easily fixable, I'll always go to the patch tool, but in this case because I also wanted to correct the other fainter flares, I went with the method I used. Both work and perhpas we've imparted some new ways to work with everyone.