I shooted this photo to show the effect of industrial smoke over the sea of Taranto, in southern Italy.
I am looking for your help to improve PP.
In particular I found difficult to set white balance; finally I setted Temperature to 3100 and Tint to zero (and increased saturation in the red channel)... do you think it is pleasant?
I think its very pleasant.
I like the mirroring of the sky in the water and depth created by the darkness there.
It is pleasantly tinted, but not accurate in terms of color temperature/balance. Without knowing the actual scene its hard to be sure what color temp it should be at. The simplest trick probably doesnt work here: Find one or more "neutral" spots that should be pure gray, near white (but not blown out) or near black, use the eyedropper tool in LR or in a curves layer in PS to reset the white balance. I suppose you could try this on the clouds, but they would not be terribly appealing set as a neutral gray and chances are they had some reflected light coloring them anyhow. I am not at home to study this more, but you could try reducing the reds/yellows and/or reducing the color temperature signficantly if you are trying to be more "accurate". I do like the feeling this image has currently.
Thanks Scott. Yes, the simplest trick (which I usually adopt too) in this case does not work well and carries to a very low color temperatur and to innatural colors. In particular the clouds are not real clouds but are formed by the smoke coming out of the steelworks below and therefore are a bit reddish and not gray. However my goal is not to be accurate but to produce a pleasant picture... thank you again for your comments.
For me, this shot would be more pleasant if the reflected smoke were cropped out and the shot had more of a panoramic feel. Below are a couple of versions.
RustyBug wrote:
...whether you want your viewer to be relaxed/calmed by a pleasant image, or do you want them to stand up and take notice (i.e. disturbed) by an image that alarms them, but done so in an aesthetic that it shows your artistic diligence.
The second one: I want to document the situation in an artistic way
Rustibug, thanks for your advice on PP ... I also prefer the red filter
