SuKai Loc: California

I went to Hawaii in March of 2012 here are some I took there I use 3 Photos at -2 , 0 , +2

1 I used Photomatix and then PhotoShop Elements to straighten and crop out the fence. I added clipping masks and touched up some of the smoke and clouds.

Active Kilauea Volcano Original shot at 0


Result of Kilauea Volcano


Original shot at 0 setting


First result but I don't like the blowen out sky


Second result: I added an extra layer and over saturated it to bring out some blue and then added a clipping mask to fix the sky

deayala1 Loc: Pleasanton, CA

Like the sky fix but too much blue in the water. Area right of waterfall is too soft.

LoneRangeFinder Loc: Left field

Agree... Too much blue in the falls. I got this so much that I now have an AWB preset stored.

conkerwood

In your original shot of the volcano the placement of the tree on top of the smoke formed the centre of interest. Even though the tree is OOF it still grabs our eye moves us up and then down the column of smoke and then to explore the volcano surrounds. While your enhancement has succeeded in bringing out more details from the white smoke and the surrounds it has also made the sky really dominant which for me tends to take your eye away from the details of the volcano. Could I suggest that it may have worked better if you had done your enhancement as a layer over your 0 shot and then used a layer mask to blend in the sky at about 20%. That would mean that all the enhancements would remain except that the sky would be considerably calmed down and thus less dominant. My other suggestion regards your crop. In the original the tree was nicely placed to balance the pic so that the eye followed the smoke. I know you cropped to get rid of the fence and took some of the left off but to me that has left small bits of bush sticking up and the tree only half way up the picture which means it has lost its impact. In this case I think it would have been far better to have taken the time to clone out the fence. This would have retained all of the important context details at the bottom of the pic and allowed you to crop some of the sky, and leave the left untouched. Still its a fascinating pic, a place I would love to visit.

Kepp them coming.

Peter