my second try

- dup layer, multiply
- new layer, radial gradient, hardlight

my third try

- dup layer, softlight
- dup layer, invert luma, still softlight
- dup layer, burn at 30%

Issabella: Have a good, relaxing, spirit enhancing vacation!

used texturize by color area only, trying to make it look wet

Having returned from my holiday in Greece and re-installed my operating system and software, I must catch up on my homework!

The Lisbon bridge: Mask to brighten the darkest areas, increase saturation and sharpened. Then I thought, what did it look like before the bridges were built!

The gold detail in the church was quite difficult, partly because of the mixed light sources.

david.

The next two.

Marina: Luminosity masks to brighten the darkest areas and the trees, increased colour saturation, cropped to get more of a panorama effect and sharpened.
Sailing ship: Very difficult - I am not sure that I achieved any improvement - increased contrast and saturation, a lot of sharpening, followed by anisotropic smoothing to reduce the noise.

david.

Three more!

Collonade: Luminosity mask to bring out the detail in the darkest areas and reflections in the glass. Saturation increase and sharpening.
Arch view: DDD mask to brighten the darkest parts, D mask to lighten the archways opposite. Sharpened.
Tomb: Only increased saturation and sharpened.

david.

And the last two!!

Vienna lights: I decided to have a bit of fun (I hope fun is allowed!)
Separate masks for the sky, lights and ironwork and then added colours, scaled and sharpened.

Vienna palace: I cheated! I thought it justified proper perspective correction, so I used Hugin before I brought it into Gimp.
Then mask to bring out detail in the dark archways and shutters, scaled and sharpened.

david.

I didn't take many photographs while I was on holiday, but I can post a few for anyone to improve.
One day a motor yacht anchored in the bay. Available for hire for a mere €840,000 per week!!!
Whilst I was in Argostoli I did the tourist bit and inspected the newly restored Drapano Bridge.

(All the images have been scaled to upload more quickly.)

david.

David: you make the pictures so much better with your techniques. I must learn more about the luminosity masks and how to use them properly.

Pat625,

There is an excellent tutorial by Pat David on luminosity masks - if you search the internet I am sure you will find it without a problem.

I have probably bored everyone about masks in this thread!!!
I use luminosity masks in their own right (modifying them as necessary), but also as a starting point for creating painted masks. I do this because I am lazy!
It can save a lot of work in making a mask.

In this thread I have talked, or given examples of, using masks - non of which justify the title "tutorial", but perhaps you may find something useful.
#32 using a painted mask
#59 use luminosity mask and modify
#402 masks.pdf
#407 saulgoode luminosity masks file
#433 gradients and layer masks
#439 using layer masks
#443 using layer masks
#551 hand drawn masks
#602 masks to enhance dark areas (not quite correct yet!)
#606 slight improvement on #602
#739 mask for sky

david.

Thank you very much, David. I can certainly use the information. Study time!

Another try at two of the recent photos. I wanted to play with the masking technique I was experimenting with a month or so ago.

Arch view: I did a select-by-colour (value) in the darkest part of the image, adjusting the threshold until I had the dark parts largely selected. Feathered the selection by about 25 pixels and saved the selection to a channel.
I then duplicated the image and used the channel as a layer mask. Colours/Curves to brighten the dark areas. Because the brightening was extreme, I then applied anisotropic smoothing to the top layer to suppress (disguise?) the noise. Perspective adjustment, increased saturation, wavelet sharpening.

Collonade: Very similar process.

The general idea works, but I need to find out how to arrive at the optimum settings.

david.

I like them.
After my little fiasco with my gimp tools, I tried the bridge photo.
Auto White Balance.
I like to duplicate the image, glausion blur @30, then grain extract,new from visible & set it as grain merge.
The grain extract layer set to overlay.
Then luminosity mask D to lighten
I saw you mention about selecting by color, so I tried select by color and selected the greens and ran Freaky Details on it.

Tom,

Glad you solved your problem.
Nice result on the Drapano bridge photograph.

David.

An attempt to improve my own photographs.

Alfa Nero: I thought I would give it a reflection - probably overdone! General adjustments and sharpening.
Drapano bridge: Mask for foreground, increased green. Remainder - adjustments with Colours/Curves - sharpened.
Distant hills: Luminosity masks to separate the various planes, then adjustment on each with Colours/Curves. Wavelet sharpening.

david.

you do usually nice adjustments, but on alfa_nero reflection is IMO unnatural (normally no reflection on the sea, or very little and distorted

PS:
look at this (copyrighted) image to see what I mean (ignore shadow)

@dinasset,
Absolutely right! It was an experiment - I was playing!

Two photographs - more Drapano bridge. Let us see improvements to these.

david.

A more sensible interpretation of the Alfa Nero picture. The dynamic range of the original is amazingly small.

david.