Well, I had posted a picture in "Post Your Favorite Landscape Photos" thread and then I thought I could play with it and edit with GIMP transforming it into a night picture:



I had never tried anything like this before with gimp.
Do you think the image is realistic? What do you think may be possible to improve on the image so that it looks more real?

Looks good to me, the only thing I would say is that the sky is still too blue and needs to be more black, but I really like the moons reflection across the water.

I would try a color overlay.
3 layers

Sort of a technicolor effect like they use in films

results



XCF workspace file is attached

I would like to see it a bit lighter so you can see, or barely see the landscape. In a full moon there should be enough light to see more detail and not so much blacked out.

Here is one with a Rodilius effect added.



I attached the workspace file for this one also.As it uses a mask.

@YAFU:
Your blue shades might clash a bit, the chosen blue for the water versus the chosen blue for the sky I mean. They might need to be more unified. I also think that the clouds are rendered with too much contrast, and that the grass is too much saturated. However, I find your moon and reflection additions pretty convincing.

@Rod:
It seems that you adressed the three possible flaws I've noted with your first edit
But the moon has become a bit too... psychedelic-ish
I'm not convinced by your last edit (rodilius) though. It brings a kind of oversharpening and sparkling that kills the photo-realistic aim IMO.

I think you did an overall decent job but it' s too saturated imo, the grass and the sky.
The clouds also look too strong, they contrast too much and they have a slight greenish/blue tinge in them.
Also I think the edges are too dark in comparison to the center.
Rod, I like your version but I think the moon needs to be more yellow, less purple. And I don' t know if my PC didn' t load the image correctly but I' m seeing some squares in the moon that look kind of weird.

I love it YAFU, I think it is beautiful.

Moons are a very trciky subject. When you are talking about night sky colours in the summer often you will end up with rather orange colours. In the winter, however, blue is the dominant colour. If you are going for realism, then it is also important to decide wether you want the focus on the moon, or the environment. It is also important to define how big the field of view is. For example when standing on a mountain taking a photo of a valley, you will end up with an overall brighter image than when taking a photo of said mountain (assuming there is no snow involved). That is simply, bacause the light has a lot more to reflect off of in a picture that covers more "volume". I have added two photos below, that should help you understand what I mean in terms of colours

More specifically onyour image:
Right now you have a full moon. Since that is the brightest it can get, It should be the brightest spot in the image.
Now the human eye is not capapble of focusing on the moon and the environment at the same time. So If you want to bring out the river and the cows more, you will end up with a brighter moon. Note that you sometimes end up with hard shadows, as if the sun was the light source.

I hope i wasn't too confusing

Thank you very much to all
I'll get to work on some of your suggestions.

Well, for now this is the best I can do:


And it expanded to 1920x1080 thanks to the magic of liquid rescale:


And here I continued having fun, with a few colors, smoke and rodilius:


@2-ton, Sorry. If I do brighter the details look better but also the imperfections are more noticeable . For now is the best I can do.

I think they are really beautiful Yafu.

Thank you very much, molly

I really like the expanded one.

Yeah, liquid rescale is an excellent tool!

I think that looks very nice. It is still a bit too much blue for my taste, but the rest is sweet

Yup, good job there!

All looking really good