Adjustment Layers

Full light photo

For this task we needed to image enhance photographs using adjustment layers.

I took my first photograph at mid-day, with an over cast sky using a timer (being careful not to move the camera)

Even though it appeared to be bright outside, my photo didn't seem to have all the highlights and shadows or vibrant feel I wanted.

However, I feel the image looks improved when I (really ever so slightly) adjusted the levels, tweaked the exposure and added more vibrancy to the image.

I really did this so slightly. I want the colours to still be true and not have 'too' dark shadows, or too many highlights. I wanted to keep the grass, a lush grass green, but not so much that you don't believe it.
I didn't play with brightness or contrast. With the levels, I could manually control the blacks and whites within the image and I didn't want to over-do it.


Adjusted image

Low light photo

 

 

Here I have taken another image but in the evening where the image is dark and there is very little clarity.

Again, I have adjusted the levels and brought the whites up a tad, added some more vibrance and a bit of contrast. At first, I felt I adjusted my first image better as the colours (in my view) are a little more true.

But enhancing a darker image, made my image also enhance the blues within my image. 
It made it look... very blue! Not very balanced.

So for this one, I felt it necessary to use a colour balance adjustment layer. 
I increased the warmer tones and shadows (yellow and red) slightly, to balance it out.
It's still a cool image with a blue evening feel but more believable than it was without the colour adjustment.


I feel there is more clarity from my adjustment layers, the details of the lush grass and leaves on the trees are more visible.

Resubmission

I had lost a bit of detail within the sky on my submissions which I didn't notice!
For the low light submission, I used my original and the edited photo together, got the colour range selection tool to select my highlights, used a quick mask adjustment layer and began to erase keeping the skies detail.