switzerland photos

[chipper33444]

my family went to switzerland over the summer and we got some great pics. i know how to birhgten and shapren and use the stamp tool to remove unwanted objects. but how would i go about making this picture look fantastic. im using it as my desktop but it looks a little fuzzy. i added title and switz flag to it. but its still not how i would like it.

 

[flibodria_1]

hi chipper, it really depends on what you want to do to....i personally like to change them around a lot, convert to one color apply different textures. Things such as that, what do you want then someone could help you with that specific thing.
Kara

 

[chipper33444]

if you look at the hills and trees they look very grainy. i need to get this out. i want it to look as sharp as possible,

 

[Welles]

Hey chipper33444. I wish you had said you were after sharpening the hills in your first post. I looked at the picture and thought it needed a sky and change in the water to reflect the cloudy aspect of the day. Here's what I did. It isn't what you were after, though. Oh well...

 

[JoeD]

You can make it a bit sharper using one of photoshop's tools/techniques, but the image isn't really sharp to begin width (probably camera movement due to the strong wind), so don't expect any impressive results.
As for noise; I don't see any extensive noise.

What I do see is a strong jpeg compression, creating lots of jpeg artifacts. This is how the blue channel looks like:

There is not a lot you can do about it, other then avoiding strong Jpeg compression or to go for a lossless format next time.

You might also consider removing that slight blue/greenish cast in your image (check the histogram).

 

[Welles]

Good analysis, JoeD.

However, chipper33444, if you wish to try and sharpen what you have now. Try selecting just the hills. That is easily done by magic wanding the sky, shift selecting the text with one of the lasso tools, shift rectangular marquee tool to add the water and finally adding the two sails to your selection by using shift and magnetic lasso. Inverse the selection and you will have the hills. Contract the selection about three pixels because there is an ugly line of JPEG compression artifacts at the skyline and next to the sails. Now Layer > New Via Copy... so you have the hills on a separate layer. Duplicate the new layer. On the top hill layer Filter > Other > High Pass...(about 2px.) Set the blend mode of that layer to Overlay and you will have a pretty good sharpening of the hill without exacerbating the JPEG artifacts too much.