Advice and feedback on image processing (misty sunrise)

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29
Name
Pete Johns
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi all,

I took this image from Bodmin Moor a few years ago. This shot was taken with the 100-400L, handheld. I've never quite managed to process it right so thought I'd ask here!

Here's the image in Lightroom, out of camera with a small crop. The white balance in the screenshot shows as custom, but it is set as taken. Also note the profile is Adobe Landscape
unedited by Pete Johns, on Flickr

Note the Histogram, which is pushed to the right but not clipping the highlights. Should I be reducing the exposure so the histogram is more in the middle? It then looks like this

reduced exposure by Pete Johns, on Flickr

To me, this looks too golden and wrong somehow, so if I reduce the colour temp and do some tweaks to blacks, shadows and highlights...it looks like this. I feel this is now far too much?
additional tweaks by Pete Johns, on Flickr
Thus the cycle begins, and I end up going around in circles trying to process it until I give up and do something else!

What are your thoughts? I appreciate it's up to me to capture how I remember the scene, but what looks right?

Feel free to have a go yourselves.
View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/190889151@N02/50563427197/in/dateposted-public/

Edit - apologies I didn't see the Post Processing forum! Could this be moved or closed?
 
Last edited:
It’s a lovely image with tonnes of potential. I know how you feel when you can’t get an image to look right especially when you were super excited when you were taking it. I think it needs more contrast - from the first image where the histogram is over the the right try increasing the black point to stretch it over the the left. Might need to reduce saturation as this might make the colours garish. I would also play with the colour temp again. Might look nice with a more neutral temp. Also, try a B&W conversion and ramp the contrast up. You could even try using a gradient mask on the contrast adjustment so you retain the reduced contrast caused by the mist...
 
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