Critique

[mattandersao]

In an attempt to stop HDRing EVERYTHING I have been using lightroom...any helpful suggestions on a few of these recent photos pppplease!

[mattandersao]

PS The last one may have been hdr'd I cant remember

[oldno7]

I like LR

Keep playing with it. Do you shoot RAW?

It's very hard to make meaningful changes to a jpeg photo.

[mattandersao]

I like LR

Keep playing with it. Do you shoot RAW?

It's very hard to make meaningful changes to a jpeg photo.

Typically yes! I like what you did to that pic ( what did you do ) looks like you upped that saturation? Contrast? And blacks maybe?

[oldno7]

I spend most of my time on the "tone curve"

upped the clarity, but you have to be careful or you get halo's

Contrast +10

recovery 22 , I use this mostly for sky detail

bumped the saturation

little bit of sharpening and noise reduction

[oldno7]

nuther-mostly tone curve

[Pelon1]

Nice job on those pics Kurt, you got that LR handled (good pics too matt)

[mattandersao]

Do you use the recovery for the whole image or use the brush

[oldno7]

Do you use the recovery for the whole image or use the brush

It depends, recovery will bring back blown highlights somewhat also.
On your's I did it on the whole image, but like I said, it only affects certain areas. At times it is worthless, depends on the pic.
I use the brush but mostly for sharpening the subject area and possibly adding blur to other areas.

[oldno7]

Used the brush here to sharpen the subject(horses)Gives the subject a 3D effect.

Very difficult to fix a blown out sky, your's had no detail to bring out so I tried to add color but it doesn't do well with that.

once again, I'm working on your small jpeg, you have the benefit of a RAW file and should be able to achieve better results.