Tropical Canyon (Night)

[old_blaggard]

I've never done a night scene before, and so I'm looking for as many critiques as I can get about this.  I hope that it will be bright enough for most monitors.

[rcallicotte]

I love everything about this, but one thing and it's more of a personal preference.  The foreground should be more visible and yet still be dark.  This is because in real life my eyes would look at the moon and the stream and see these as they are in your image.  But, my eyes would adjust to the foreground, when I looked away from the bright moonlight.

[zionner]

I like what you've done with the scene,

The only thing I would say, is that for me, your sky's to... blue I feel the sky needs to have a darker colour to it

[MacGyver]

I don't know how a tropical night looks, dark I suppose
My monitor isn't quite happy with your image, I use sRGB settings and can actually see very little... well, after all it's night
I like the "Smoke on the Water" perhaps you should add the "Fire in the Sky" (after the song )

[old_blaggard]

Thanks for the comments so far .  Zionner, I agree that the sky should be a little less blue.  MacGyver, I'll try to brighten it up a little, but there comes a point where it's so bright that it just looks like a dark day .  Finally, I see where you're coming from, Calico, but I don't see how to implement that... more visible without getting brighter?

[rcallicotte]

After your render, use something like Photoshop to dodge out the foreground just slightly so we can see it if we squint.   

[Edit - Or you could use very soft fill-in lights]

[inkydigit]

looks great on my imac 24"...
the only thing I might change is the water...the wave/ripple pattern seems a bit too big for this scene...?

[cyphyr]

The composition here is great, no crits at all. All I would add is that if you save the image out as an exr you can resample it in Photoshop CS2+ and Photomatrix and use the resulting images to bring out the foreground (or any other elements you choose) in greater detail, brightness, and contrast without loosing the general balance of the image.
Richard

[Tangled-Universe]

looks great on my imac 24"...
the only thing I might change is the water...the wave/ripple pattern seems a bit too big for this scene...?

I agree with this, as well as with the critique as that it looks great so far How did you do the moon, post?

The only thing besides the water which I think could be improved is the coloring of the trees or the rocks. It's just how you approach that, you can either lighten up the surfaces and then decrease the exposure or darken the trees and keep the exposure as is. With this setup the trees seem to be illuminating.
I've tried something like this before, long ago, I know it's not easy

Martin

[old_blaggard]

Thanks for the comments.  I'm working on another update .

[old_blaggard]

Here we are!  I've taken Martin's suggestions into consideration, and have tried to make it a little more visible while still maintaining that "night" feel.  I haven't been able to figure out .exr files, but I think it looks good for now... something to work on later .

[inkydigit]

to use exr files in ps cs3....open your file, then go to file menu and convert to 16bit or 8bit ...a dialogue window will open with exposure sliders etc where you can adjust the image.
this one seems way to dark for me(though on a crappy lcd monitor at work...will check back at home later.
if you have an exr version I would love to have a go at adjusting it for fun!

[rcallicotte]

Did you run this through PhotoMatix?  If not, I recommend trying the demo.  It leaves a mark, when using the demo, but it will give you some ideas of what you can do.

[old_blaggard]

I've had some weird issues with color profiles, where when I view it in some editors, it looks good, and when I view it in others, it looks way too dark.  I'll try to embed a consistent color profile and update it so that people don't have issues.

As for using .exr file, I was able to open them and vary the exposure as a whole, just not individual bits of it.  Again, though, I am a complete Photoshop noob, which is something that I should really work on fixing.  I'll give Photomatix a shot at some point, Calico - I wasn't aware they had an OS X demo.  Thanks.

EDIT: For anyone who wants to play with a .exr file: http://sdcarpenter.free.fr/paul/ashundar/tmp/Project_42-3.exr

[rcallicotte]

http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html