Muted Autumn, year fades

[Ian R]

My first photo for critique, but I felt I should. I was out walking and the way the day had the first real cold and damp feel to it was quite sad. Nobody was around and the old reservoir was still and faint wind blowing. I tried to process the image as I felt at the time, but any input appreciated. I used Lightroom, but that is all I have. Thanks for any input.

[pluton]

It has a nice muted, clearly intentional color treatment that could fairly suggest sadness.  I would investigate an at least somewhat cooler white balance as a way to communicate cold.  But that's just me and my clichés...yours may vary.

[elsa hoffmann]

Ian, please post what camera you used, lens, as well as your settings.
The image is very noisy and I would like to see what you did.

[Ian R]

Thank you for the input.

Keith, I did reduce the colour temperature as I was thinking along those lines too, but losing the reds almost changed the composition. Probably layers and masks would help here to do it selectively, but I don't think that they are available in Lightroom.

Elsa, I used a D7100 and 75-150mm E lens. I added some grain in post processing to keep the texture across the photo. Without grain, I felt that it looked too smooth and 'clean', and the texture of the grasses was less pronounced.

But I rarely attempt post processing to make a feeling so I may well be a bit off on what I should be doing. The smallest changes make a difference, and I am not really up with all the different editing suites out there - I only started using Lightroom about 6 weeks ago, before that just basic Google Picasa.

[John Geerts]

Adding grain (or noise) will usually not 'help' the picture in PP as you lose detail.  I would have used more contrast and (de-)saturation but I am not sure how LR handles that.

[Peter Forsell]

I like the colors and tones. Also the composition with the lighter foreground works for me. Thumbs up for your photography.

The processing isn't quite to my liking. Especially the noise/grain in the sky part looks cheesy and obviously fake and wrong. To look more convincing the grain should imitate film grain imho. Now it almost looks like the lighter areas have more grain than darker areas, when it should be the opposite.

There's a lot of potential in this image. Please have another go with processing.

[Airy]

@John Geerts : handling contrast and saturation in LR is easily done, and can be applied selectively (zones, colors...).
@Ian R : I like the result.
I had the impression you tried to mimic a painting.

The grainy sky is a good idea, otherwise it would look very empty compared to all other zones. But the sky looks paradoxically more grainy (I won't say cheesy, being a Frenchman) than the foreground, so some fine-tuning seems necessary indeed.

Detail is kept in the dark areas (woods), which is good.

The vignetting in the bottom right is maybe too abrupt, so I'd have it decreased, or I'd get a smoother transition (LR does that easily and well).

Colors are well assorted, and the fact that each plane has its own dominant color contributes to a great composition.

[Ian R]

Thank you for the input - it is really appreciated. I will make some adjustments later on and share again. It is very difficult to see exactly what changes are being made in Lightroom and how they affect the image at full screen or print resolution as either the picture is zoomed in all the way (100%) or not at all, but I have some ideas so make for more gradual changes.

[Ian R]

Right, I have spent some time working with my image. I have reduced the grain and adjusted the vignette along with some other tweaks to the colour and tone. One thing I noted is that it is possible to end up making things worse and also going around in circles, however I do think that is an improvement over my previous attempt - less is more I hope!

[pluton]

Yes, this is an improvement, and yes...you can end up going in circles.  But how else can you learn, except to play with it?
Suggestion: I'd like to see the lighter tones made lighter.  In other words, increase the contrast in the lighter areas, without breaking the mood, of course. It's a touch flatter than it has to be. 
In Lightroom, this might mean selecting the upper half of the frame with the Gradient tool, and applying some combination of increased Exposure, Clarity, and/or Contrast.
There are also the four tone adjustment sliders that sit under the curves display...those are worth playing with if you haven't already.
Note: I find it helpful, when experimenting with different possible Develop treatments in Lightroom, to create a new Virtual Copy for each new approach.  That way you can easily scroll between the different versions and quickly compare them.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

The image is moody, but overall impression is quite dull. Partly because the contrast is too low, partly because of a lack of perceived acuity of the foreground details (the reed mace stand).

In cases such as this, tweaking an image based on an existing version might indeed make you go into circles, so better to start all over again from the RAW file. Pay attention to image contrast and local sharpening.

[Airy]

This image is dull. Sometimes, an image ought to be dull. I understand, from the initial post, that this is the case. Remaining question : what is the right measure of dullness? how to best achieve it (best = not leaving the impression that it is just a bad OOC jpeg ? hard to define)

- desaturation (possibly selective)
- lower overall contrast
- linear contrast rather than S-curve
- lower overall luminosity
- lower local contrast (clarity)
- color balance (temperature)

there are so many combinations.

[Ian R]

Airy, that is exactly my conundrum. I can make the image brighter and with more contrast but as soon as I do that the subtlety evaporates and the focus and feel of the image changes. Bjorn is right about different parts of the image being treated differently but that is a bit beyond my skills and software. I knew it would be a challenge due to the tone and colour, but I wasn't sure what needed doing and where.

[pluton]

The local adjustment tools(Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, and Radial Filter) should give you plenty of capability.

[Frank Fremerey]

The edit is muted. Very interesting you post it "unpumped".

Daring.

I like it.