Thank you eGambler. You're right - there's numerous possibilities here.

Thank you Frank. It's not a difficult capture.

Sounds good. Don't worry if you don't have red hair - most Scots don't. And there's not that many Irish red-heads either - we just have more than our fair share :-) .

You're right, Singing Swan. It must have been her day off :-) . Lots of wind-swept tourists, though...

Thanks for commenting, MadMike. Sometimes "picturesque" isn't the best way to go.

As Shakey suggested, a specialised program may do a better job than Lightroom, but what you can do is use LR to get things started.

When there's noise and softness together, what you want to avoid is sharpening the noise or having the de-noise soften the picture even more. The most effective tool for that in LR is the Masking slider in the Details section. You can crank up the masking so that only the main edges are sharpened, and when you've done that you can get away with using more de-noise without worrying too much about it softening the image.

There will be some loss of fine detail, but in a situation like this you're looking for the most acceptable compromise, and what matters most is what it looks like at normal viewing distance.

Finally, if you can't have proper sharpness, the next best thing is vividness. Clarity, lifting the shadows and getting the overall contrast and light levels right are the main factors, but you might also find that Vibrance or Saturation can help too.

And the real "finally" is that you can select problem areas and give them targeted adjustments. In your pic the main problem area for noise is the background, and it can be selected and given softening treatments of various kinds (including de-noise).

#1 below is just a crop, which focusses on the problem and has the same effect as enlarging.

#2 might seem like nothing much has been done, but it has sharpening where it matters and the de-noise isn't enough to significantly soften the image. It could have been given more, but that's when you start to lose fine detail, and when taking the next step into account, the image doesn't need massive amounts of global de-noise.

#3 shows the next step, which is targeted adjustments for the background (done by selecting the background). Noise on the dog isn't going to be that noticeable, and any attempts to use more de-noise would result in softening and loss of detail - which would be noticeable.

It's often the case when using de-noise and sharpening that you have to consider what matters and what doesn't - what's going to be noticeable and what isn't. If you can, you want to avoid using sharpening and de-noise where it's not really needed, and keeping them both to a minimum.

#4 is a snip of the adjustments in the Details section. The Masking is quite high, and done with the ALT key depressed to show what's being affected by the sharpening. You want large smooth areas to get none and the sharpening mostly limited to the main edges.

I wanted to use a Radius value greater than 1 to include the areas that have soft focus (due to the wide aperture), but unfortunately the dog's ears were prone to getting that tight haloing that's a symptom of using too high a Radius value (or too much sharpening in general).

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#1 - just a crop.

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#2 - global sharpening (with masking) and global de-noise.

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#3 - with added global and local (background only) adjustments.

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#4 - a snip of the Details section adjustments.

.....and it's not looking pretty :) .

This is one of the shots I got from the other side and I haven't even tried to pretty it up. The tide was out and there's a generous amount of seaweed to be seen, but this isn't about making it picturesque.

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Yes, that would have been nice, but I wanted the shoreline to act as a leading line leading the eye across the loch to the distant glen. If I'd gone further left, the leading line of the boat would have hidden the shoreline, and without any interference from me, the boat wouldn't have been pointing towards the glen. If, as they say, the eye tends to move from left to right, I don't see the boat as being a blocking element, and from the back of the boat it's shoreline-loch-glen.

Thanks for commenting.. I like the fact that the foreground and mid-ground both channel the eye towards the distant cloud beams and illuminated mountains. If there was a dramatic foreground element it would tend to become the main subject of the scene, and the eye would be inclined to stop there. As a consequence the foreground element would become an obstacle blocking the way to the rest of the shot.

The way it is, whatever part of the image that the eye stops on, there will always be that channelling effect to lead the eye deeper into the image, with that pleasant reward at the end. I think that's what Dave was referring to when he mentioned good depth cues.

I would say the skill is in adapting the effect to suit the image, which isn't going to happen with a one-click effect. That and knowing when to stop (when is that not a requirement... :-) ).

Thanks for the feedback, DWU. As long as the drop in resolution didn't cause any problems with editing.

That's a funny one, Shakey. Windows and Lightroom both recognised it as a DNG on my computer. Do you have your importer set to import raw files as tiff? I believe that DNG is classified as a type of raw.

Thanks for taking part, DWU. There's nothing quite like contrasty B&W for drama. Did you find the reduced resolution a problem at any point in your edit?

Thank you RB. Very moody, and there's definitely an increased sense of presence from the mountains :thumbup: .

Thanks for commenting, NJ. One of the things that I liked about the scene was that the shape of the gable was echoed in some of the peaks of the mountains. Again that's something that was clearer to me when I viewed it first-hand. Maybe with a re-shoot with better light for the mountains and some of the gable outlined by the sky.......