WC #613 - The Mind's Eye

But this is what the camera saw. And even this was captured using a .9 soft edge GND filter. I aligned the soft edge just below the top of the cliff face on the left to hold back the sky and the cliff face on the right. But still, due to the wide dynamic range of this scene and the rugged terrain of Zion Canyon, it took a shadows/highlights adjustment layer, three brightness/contrast adjustment layers, a levels adjustment layer, a curves adjustment layer, a selective color adjustment layer, a hue/saturation adjustment layer, and a vibrance adjustment layer to bring out the image I remember seeing.

Beautiful view and magnificent cloud shapes. I'm exhausted just reading about your processing. To me there appears to be some sort of halo in the sky around the U of the cliffs.

Great comp in this with the clouds seeming to emanate from the valley between the cliffs. The blue sky and red cliffs make for a nice color combo. (I do notice a halo along the cliff edge on the left side.) Like Ronald, I'm impressed with all the work you went to for your final image! Your finished version is certainly more appealing than the original.

Funny how our eyes and camera sensors often see things differently. Very nice improvements working with the layers Jim, especially in brightening up the canyon walls; really makes the picture.

Wow, the differences are night and day, Jim. The first post is lovely and definitely speaks of the wonders of Zion, while the second version is muddy and uninteresting. Great job of processing.