My tries.

just finished photo of the old one, cleaned up branches and
sharpened

Issabella,
You never spoil photographs - I do regularly, but try to keep them hidden!!!

animicule,
Nice result. After cleaning up the trees, they may offer you a job!!!

david.

Curves and little bit details.

an attempt on Cuerda del Pozo 002
- duplicated, luma invert, opacity 50%, grain merge
- new from visible
- dup, unsharp mask 1.0, saturation +100, overlay

an attempt on Cruise Ships
-crop
-adjusted luminosity and colours
-added a glass frame

just used levels on both, picked black and white spots
G'MIC channel processing and sharpen (gold-meinel)

The first thing to do on the top picture is to straighten it to make its verticals vertical. There is only one degree of tilt(*) but all these vertical lines make it very perceptible.

(*) which is better than my own pictures that usually err between 1.5° and 2.0°

That's funny !
I hadn't even noticed that it was crooked !

Issabella, I like your photo editing of the church/monastry.

Dinasset, your use of frames is interesting. I never paid much attention to frames. So I have to learn a bit, before showing something.

Nice results from everyone on these two photographs.

Cruise ships: I "removed" the piece of rubbish from the grass!
Luminosity Masks did not give me a starting point for mask creation, so hand-drawn.
Grass was too bright, so masked and adjusted. Sky and distant mountains masked and increased blue. Masked sea and increased blue. Overall contrast increased. Wavelet sharpened.
Screen-shot shows masks.

Sissia Monastery: Corrected my usual tilt! Slight adjustments to brightness, contrast and saturation. Masked foreground and darkened to reduce distraction. Sharpened.

david.

Well done, David. I specialy like the image with the cruise ships. If you want the ships stay white and the water / sky blue, then I think also, you have to use masks, as you did. In the original image the ships, sky and water are almost neutral. I think Issabella wanted the image with the cruise ships to look like a postcard (is that right?), with nice blue sky and blue water. Then automaticaly the ships also become blue. Because they all were almost gray/white/neutral. So if you then want to have white ships, you have to seperate them with masks.

iarga, you are right, I meant to keep the ships white, but I still do myself a mess choosing the wrong mask, I think. I like your results a lot. You all have great skilful to get best results. Thanks for your great help for me to improve.

my try on Cuerda del Pozo 011
- rotated
- applied Jamac's Dave effect (using G'mic)
- applied Curves to get it darker

my try on Sissia
very simple flow:
- rotated
- levels auto

Dinasset, great effect on the picture. I love it.
My second try on the cruises. I tried to keep the ships whiter, but they may have some of blue colour.

if you like to reduce more the blue on the ships:
- duplicate the layer
- select freely the ships
- color>desaturate
- adjust opacity to something between 70 and 80 to let a bit of blue

just to show, but as you know I'm not good in making free selections, you can do it much better



do not select/desat the "Windows" of the ships, they have to stay blueisch

Issabella and Dinasset, nice results here above. I like that very much!

Issabella, you know GIMP much, much more then I do. I see a lot of things, you show in other topics, I know nothing about. But of course I can learn.

edit: Thank you Dinasset for extra info.

The shadow parts of the cruise ships, where they are lit by reflection from the water, perhaps should have some blue?
The light will be a reflection of sky?

Comments please!

david.

Thanks iarga for encourage me to continue.
Dinasset, Your method works great! I can see the ships white really. I applied 80% opacity as you said.