Issabella,

Two more beautiful photographs!
Vultures1: I used separate masks for the foreground and background rocks, Curves on each layer, Saturation adjustment and Wavelet sharpen.
Vultures2: Similar process, but then added a hint of Forest Green (#228B22) on the foreground rocks and a hint of Orange Red (#FF4500) on the background rocks.
Vultures3: Mask for the birds - increase contrast and brightness. Mask for the rocks, reduced brightness, slight increase of contrast, wavelet sharpen.

david.

Odin, thanks for your outcome. it's funny to see them with plenty food around.
David I like your three results. Vultures 1 and 3 are very nice. I'm going to try to use masks too, although I'm not used to using them yet.

My tries. I used Luminosity Masks and contrast. Also I applied a gradient on one of them as experimentation for me.

my tries on one of the pictures

basically added a gradient twice: multiply and hardlight, to give the idea of a hot day



... and framed

the other one is out of focus on the subject area, only the rocks in the foreground are in focus, I don't see any good way to improve it

Good ones dinasset, we were in the 90's yesterday ... to hot for me !
I couldn't do much with the other picture either.
I used a mask on the D channel ( Thank You david for the tutorial )
and tried to lighten the birds a bit, then adjusted the hue and saturation.
merged the layers and used G'MIC Sharpen- Inverse Diffusion.

SeriousTom,
I am glad that the "tutorial" was of use to you.

dinasset,
The birds being out of focus in the other shot, I treated the scenery as the subject and it gave me a chance to play with nuances - thank you for that.

I found a site with all the colours (English names) http://www.farb-tabelle.de/en/table-of-color.htm
The colours appear to correspond with the ones you have used.

david.

Thanks for your results on the pics, David, Serious Tom and Dinasset.

Here they are cooling off after a hot day.


Scaled original photo larger
duplicated original to make the bird/rock layer
added alpha channel Fuzzy select sky and deleted it.
then used color curves and color brightness contrast
to darken with some highlights still left in.

opened as layer a photo with cloudy sunset sky, scaled it to
where it would cover and looked nice, adjusted brightness
contrast and positioned it.

made new layer transparent for gradient. position above sky layer
choose gradient with transparency and stripe like ___||___
gradient settings cone symetrical 100% offset
positioned a few gradient lines.
used hard eraser to clean gradients from front of birds and rocks
and hard eraser @ 20/30% opacity to fade the gradients out at the top.

then on bird layer, used quickmask and 2 pixel hard brush to select bird edges
on the "lighted" side and deleted the selection. postitioned original
layer under bird layer so hightlight from the original shows through and
adjust original layer brightness contrast if it is to bright or dull.

when done layers were
gradient
new sky
bird
original

Happy to see a member more in this thread and for your outcome, animicule. I find it very innovative. Could you tell us what your steps were?

Sorry animicule, I saw your outcome and not your previous post with your steps. Thank you so much.
Here I have two more photos for you all.

Another one:

Issabella, it is fine, added steps after your request.
Edited the post with the picture in case they
would not be on the same page.
Thank you for your kind comments!

No fancy adjustments. Just white balance, colors to inc green, Did sky as a separate layer from the rest.

1st picture - what a beautiful old bridge - I decided we should see it as it was originally!!!
Luminosity masks - MM for the landscape generally, DD to lighten the trees - curves and saturation on both.

2nd picture - curves only to bring out particularly the red in the tree trunks.

Both pictures - wavelet sharpening - scaled to 2000 x 1500.

david.

Issabella, now we know where you took the first picture of the bridge of this long topic, you were standing on the new bridge.

I'm so happy for you all giving your contribution and art in photography.
Iarga, nice clean photo to the main subject.
Animicule, I really appreciate your contribution.
Pat you made the sky be more intense in colour and the trees too.
David, your idea of removing the recent bridge to show the old one is really brilliant. I like it a lot. I find the colour very good treated in both pics. Thanks.
I tried it too. I chose the same Luminosity Masks for my tries too.

Issabella,

Glad you liked the picture of the old bridge.
I think I have now made an improvement, simply by cropping it!!

david.

I do not post much in this thread because I do not have sufficient knowledge yet on photo techniques; however I thought this photo should be an 'evocative' evening moonlight shot -

David said:
"1st picture - what a beautiful old bridge - I decided we should see it as it was originally!!!"

Let us have a look at it as seen by an ancient Roman......