Linary Loc: UK

I snapped this river scene recently and the result is far from ideal. My main problem with it is the water looks more like a gravel roadway that the wet stuff.

Can anyone turn gravel into water please?

Jpeg version

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DNG version
Attached file:
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R.G. Loc: Scotland

The jpg and the DNG are both very small. Is there anything bigger to work on?

Linary Loc: UK

Try this one (DNG) it is about 7.7Mb
My original is 25 Mb

Attached file:
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minniev Loc: MIssissippi

I’ll start by saying my offering is fairly terrible. But the tools have promise so I thought I’d post and discuss them. I have fun with these sorts of challenges but I’m at my country house with no computer, no photoshop nor any tools that I might normally use to undertake such a thing. I have, at least once, toyed with such an effort by making a layer in PS, subjecting it to some heavy Simplify filters in Topaz plus some other stuff, then carefully masking in enough of the water to overcome that top-ripple effect that you have here.

But today I have no Topaz and no layers. I have LRCC mobile on my trusty phone, and a couple of free Adobe mobile extensions, PS Mix and PS Fix. Mix didn’t do a darned thing for the water but Fix had a Liquify tool with 3 sub tools under it. You smash them around with your finger like finger painting to create ripples, swirls, etc. I did a bit of fiddling in LR after that to alter the colors in the water, using the brush tool.

Here’s what I’ll experiment with later after dinner: PS Mix appears to have a layering tool that could prove useful. So I’ll try to layer the original version with the finger-painted version and see if I can mask them like I would in PS.

There are lots of tools that we have access to, but never learn to use. These are a few that you’ve inadvertently encouraged me to learn.

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artBob Loc: Near Chicago

Lotsa fussing, with color of river and surrounding area, back and forth, subtracting yellow, increasing saturation and vibrance, adding clarity. Of course I'm guessing at the water color. I have two.

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dannac Loc: 60 miles SW of New Orleans

How about calming the river a little.

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rfcoakley Loc: Auburn, NH

Here's my attempt. I found another image of a lake with similar color of the river. I added that image as a layer above the background and transposed it slightly to make sure that nothing but water was on top of the river in the background. Then, I made a selection of the river in the background and applied that selection as a mask to the layer on top. I tried different layer blend modes and settled on dissolve with about 60% opacity and 85% fill. I finished with a couple of topaz adjustments and minor straightening.

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R.G. Loc: Scotland

Adding some colour to the water wasn't difficult but I had to resort to cloning to get the texture looking more realistic.

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Linary Loc: UK

Thank you all for applying your skills. I am puzzled as to how I got into this in the first place. Living in a harbour village, I have taken hundreds of photos of the water and most actually look like water. I can only conclude that a combination of mid-day sun, high shutterspeed and shallow water have caused this effect. I have about fifty of these photos, of which I might try and salvage five or six using the methods you have kindly demonstrated.

artBob Loc: Near Chicago

My analysis of the problem has to do with color theory. Blue and orange are "complementaries" or opposites--they cancel each other out. Want a duller (less saturated, lower value) blue, add orange. Here, the bit of sky blue reflected in the water is mostly canceled by the orangish color on the river bed. You could wait until the sun wasn't reaching the river bed so strongly, or do post processing.