Help! Can I rescue this and what should I do?

[Jesse24]

I'm stumped as to what to do with this. It was shot on a P&S on a boat and it's even out of focus I think!

I'd like to do something like a 16x9 crop and make it 'dark" but I do not know how I can do that without it becoming too noisy. It's just bland at the moment but I really want to keep it!

[milspec]

I think you may have forgotten the photo.

[milspec]

Oops ... my mistake Bittorrent stole by bandwidth so it took about a minute for the image to start downloading. Anyway, I thought I would give it a go and made some changes. Mind you, it's from a a low res jpg so you probably will be able to achieve a better result from the original.

[Lani]

What software do you use for processing, Jesse?

[kiwi]

It's a bit of a dreary shot, what makes it significant ?

[Old Skool]

Try this, quick & dirty with some Lightroom Presets.

[ricktas]

It is a fairly bland photo compositionally, central horizon, central subject, but my thoughts were a mono conversion to make the rocks really stand out. So converted to mono, levels adjustment and curves adjustment (medium contrast) to boost it.

[carrg1954]

Hi,
Lightroom, exp +.35,fill +10,blacks +30, brightness +10, contrast +10, clarity, +10, vibrance +10 ,saturation +5.
highlights +10, lights +10, darks -10, shadows +10.
Hue, aqua +40, blue +20, purple +10,magenta +10.
Saturation blue +15, purple +15.
Horizon leveled and cropped. No sharpening or noise reduction.

[gcflora]

Did this this morning... can't remember what I did

p10404664203542-edit.jpg

Edit: But it was a combination of masked orange and blue photo filters and hue/vibrance changes

[Jesse24]

Hi,

Sorry for not replying I have been away for a few days. It really is quite a boring photo in terms of composition. It was just a spur of the moment shot where I hoped to get the look of emptiness and loneliness. However being on a boat and only shooting with a P&S the photo is of bad quality.

Thanks everyone for the help, I was going for something such as Rick has done and will keep that in mind in future. I've only just started learning Photoshop so I've only just practiced the basics so far so seeing what the different settings did was helpful.