rappar Loc: Kingston Ontario

I often visit a site featuring landscape photography by two Canadians, Darwin Wiggett and Samantha Chrysanthou. They produce some beautiful images.
Recently, Darwin showed a few before and after shots. The difference was incredible. I think I might have a chance of taking a before shot similar to his. However, the final version was another story. Are there books written on Post Production skills or is it just a matter of trial and error? Is this a learned skill or something you were born with?
I'd sure like to get better at this and would like to know how to do it.
Thanks
Ron

HEART Loc: God's Country - COLORADO

Ron, skill enters when the talent isn't enough. Try some of the free software and take a stab; success will be gratifying when you realize you CAN do it.

Try Picasso3, Gimp, and others. There are also some ebooks that are free to next-to-free. Best wishes, and welcome to the Hog!

SueMac Loc: Box Elder, SD

Lots of free post processing programs as well as Adobe Elements that is quite reasonable. Do a search on uTube, there are lots of tutorials. Also there are sites on the web where you subscribe to that have tutorials.

Sue

BillyDuds Loc: North Carolina

I highly recommend Jeff Schewe's book, The Digital Negative, Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw and Photoshop. It's a fabulous book. I've really only begun to follow his methods, but already my photos have taken a giant leap upward.

It's a somewhat more expensive approach, of course, than the solutions previous posters have mentioned. Yet if truth be known, those Canadian landscape photographers more than likely use Lightroom +/or Camera Raw and Photoshop. Best luck!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Scott Kelby has a 1 hour video, sponsored by B&H, demonstrating taking plain, dull, poorly lit travel photos into useful pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIt1cDw5lLI

He uses the expensive version of Photoshop and Lightroom, but the cheap Elements version works too.

Bill

BillyDuds Loc: North Carolina

Out of curiosity, I just took a look at Wiggett and Chrysanthou's website. I'm by no means an expert, or even much experienced at post production. Yet even to my uneducated eyes their photos are obviously photoshopped--the overly saturated colors in grass and mountains, for example. I prefer a more subtle look myself, but that's just me.

Kelby's B&H video is well worth watching, as are many other B&H videos.