Kolob Canyon - REPOST

Carol, I like the scene, but the sky just doesn't do it for me, I think this would work better completely B&W, just my opinion.
John

Carol,

I've looked at his several times now and while it interests me, I'm just not really connection with it. I agree with John that it might work better for me as a black and white.

pat

Carol, the rock formation works as a good subject matter. I might entertain a crop in from the left to clean things up there a bit.

As for overall color between the landmass and the sky I'm a bit lost. The landmass leans toward B&W and the sky looks like some color going on there. Not sure about the processing overall. I think I would agree with the other comments of making the image entirely a B&W just to see how things look after that.

I can't connect with this one, Carol. There's too much conflict between the sky and and canyon wall. I agree this would look better as all monochrome.

--P

Hi Carol, those tilted trees are wild, it would be interesting to get up there and see what's going on. From an artistic view, this doesn't grab me, but that's my vision, not yours. Technically, there quite a bit of "haloing" going on around the trees down the left side as a blend artifact that isn't there at the top or on the right. Given how the top looks, I'm sure you can fix that. The "original" version has a nice sense of old time mystery plus a good dose of threatening skies.

Thank you all for your critiques and idea. Paul, thanks for the idea of cropping. For whatever reason, it never dawn on me, but I can see looking at the two small boulders that I retained, that it's a much sharper image.

Mark, thanks in particular for the comments on the mask. I re-did it. The two trees on the left were very difficult to work with, but I think the new mask is much better and less, muddy.

I've re-done the sky.

Things learned. The Focus Mask is a plus for starting but then it's necessary to refine. I picked up a tip somewhere along the way about using the focus mask and that's to set the viewing option. The Overlay Option seems to work best.

I've also learned that NIK and Adobe are much more difficult to coexist in CC1 2014 than before. It appears to be necessary to apply the mask when combining different actions.

At any rate, here's the latest version. Looks like a simple scene and it ain't!.

Thanks again for the ideas.

I like the repost. There the hints of pink in the sky feel like they belong and the blend looks perfect all the way along the skyline.

I agree with Mark here, Carol. The sky looks much better and I do like the crop too.