Buttermere - Most beautiful lake in Cumbria

ok first image loaded up.. hum.. I think

Buttermere in the Lake District

Jono - a stunning start - what fantastic perspective - great reflection - I like the way the foreground leads the eye towards the horizan - John

Awesome image...love how it leads...nice.

See the rocks in the foreground in the first image..
With a really low angle they become monster rocks, I thought this was quite fun. One advantage of the swivel screen on the Canon S3 I think if you did this with a DSLR at the very least you would get wet...

Stunning Image Dr.Jono.

This one would make a great pic for a calendar. :)

Heya Jono - nice to see you here - I'm the resident pest that looks at the images and thinks 'if only' so & so had been done - if you'd rather I didn't do that, just let me know...

This looks like a lovely location, but your shot is lacking just a little of the tonal range that it could have - a quick push of your levels brings it up nicely, as does just a touch of sharpening to pull up the detail in the rock there - how's this one look??

Thanks, thats why I am here, learn and share. When you say push the levels, how are you doing this. I understand the sharpening bit.. I agree, I like the improvement

Cheers Jono

To 'push' the levels, just open up the levels tool (ctrl-L in PS, or apple-L on a mac) and bring the black and white points up to the edge of where you actually have tone - in this image, the blacks start a little way up the histogram, and the whites flatten out - by shifting the black and white points, you spread the tonal range in use between the tonal range you can use, and maximise what's in your shot - the blacks get blacker instead of being gray, and the whites brighten up... a little tweak to the midtones, and you're 90% there, without using brightness/contrast, or shadows/highlights, which are potentially two of the most destructive tools in PS for the detail in your image...

Some people prefer to use the curves tool - I find it slower, and I'm more likely to spend an age tweaking the image all over with curves - a simple bump of your levels will help pull details out of haze, brighten up dull, lifeless images, and bring the colour back into shots...

In PS, you can hold the alt key as you use the levels to get a visual representation of what exactly is going 'black' or 'white', so you don't block up the shadows, or blow all your highlights... I like to see a full tonal range in an image though, right through from black to white - it's what gives your eye a benchmark to compare the rest of the tones with - hence an image without any true black looking grey and washed out, but one with a good range looking punchy and bright...

Cheers,
Stuart

a great description of what you did Stuart, i think i'm learning more here in 2 months than i did in 18 months over on the zo

Stuart, thanks this is very useful. I agree with Sharon, I have started to learn. This is so good.

thanks again
Jono

Very nice image Jono and with the help of the maste teacher, we are surely all going to improve immensely. :-)