Brilliant. This is a little understood flaw of jpeg compression. Colors are smeared all over the image, to varying degrees depending on the subject matter. I first observed this when scanning 8x10 photos (shot on film and printed in a darkroom) of beautiful custom made guitars for a web site. The photos were shot by a pro in a studio and were spectacular. There were three shots, each of a single guitar on a black velvet background. Each guitar was a different color...one a deep red, one a golden color, and one a dark brown.

Scanning these photos altered the black velvet to three different shades, each one picking up color contamination from its guitar, particularly the golden one. A side by side arrangement of the three scans on the website were useless...the blacks looked so bad. I scanned with three different scanners with a variety of settings, but it always happened, until I saved to .tiff instead of .jpeg. Of course I couldn't use the .tiff files on a website so it was a problem that was eventually fixed with tedious post processing to get the blacks to match.

I researched the problem and learned of the .jpeg contamination. Now that I'm aware of it, I see it all the time in photos people post, particularly those with a lot of blue sky, or a lot of green woods. It just dumps those colors all over the place.

It's a .jpeg problem.

Dean,
Here's what I'm seeing in these. The issue is Ambient Color Contamination. To illustrate, I've analyzed two of the photos. In photo 1, the light is affected by the green tint the leaves through which it is being filtered. In the 5th photo, the red/brown of the rocks and bed of the stream have tempered the green a bit, as one can observe. This color contamination affects the presentation of the scene and can reduce the contrasts between the various subjects included therein.

Analyzing the color contamination one can see the predominant hue in each. The first photo shows a pronounced green contamination that affects the entire scene. The 5th image shows that color green contamination is not as pronounced, but still leaning toward green and this is the color that affects the entire scene. The overall effect is that it reduces the local contrasts.

This happens with almost every photograph taken. If one were to photograph a scene with an open sky, blue would be the contaminating color. Reddish colored canyon walls will push the influence toward the red/brown hues.

Accommodating these color contaminations will provide a more true view of the scene. It will also provide a better contrast within the photograph. Along with a bit of burning/dodging and vignetting will subtly draw the viewer to those areas you wish to "feature" as the "star" of the photograph.
--Bob

Bob,
Thank you for taking the time to analyze two of my photos. I have read what you found. What I don’t understand is specifically how to utilize that information to change how these photos were edited. They were shot in raw, edited in Photoshop Elements 2019 on my desktop, saved as jpegs, then edited in Snapseed on my iPad, including the application of a slight vignette, then posted here. I agree that burning/dodging can be helpful and I didn’t do that with these.

I guess what I am asking is can you take my photos, as posted here, and make visible improvements to post here, along with what you specifically did? Or, can you tell me specifically how you would change the editing to improve the final results so that I can post here?

Thank you for your time.

Dean