Creek Bed and Sky - remastered

Since the original Star Wars trilogy is on Spike TV I thought that I would take a look at a photo I edited a long time ago and re-work it. I ultimately decided on this photo because it is currently the background wallpaper for my blog.

I am including the original photo as well so it is easy to compare the two photos. In the new one I think that all of the colors have a more natural feel to them as well as some other differences that jumped out at me:

• the grass isn't eye-burning green,
• the clouds in the sky have more detail,
• the rocks in the creek bed are greyish instead of purpleish/blueish,
• there is more detail in the trees instead of it being blurred due to reducing noise,
• and hopefully some differences that you may notice as well!

With the original photo I only used Topaz Labs products, whereas with the new one I have the benefit of using a few products from Nik Software and combining them with Topaz InFocus and DeNoise. The colors in the sky of the new photo (specifically the yellow and red) blend together a bit more in the new photo which I think actually enhances the photo, once again making it look more realistic. I also applied the lens correction aspect of Photoshop CS5 to the photo which is why the dimensions look slightly different between the photos (a small adjustment that I think helps present the photos in a more natural manner as well).

Which of the two do you like more? Are there any other photos that I have done that you really like, but would like to see what they would look like now if I processed them again? If so, please leave a comment either here or on the photo in my smugmug gallery and I will add re-reprocessing it to my to-do list.

Re-mastered Creek Bed and Sky

Original Creek Bed and Sky