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My initial reaction is that the shadows are underexposed.
I don't think there's sufficient light for commercial print purposes. See histogram in Photoshop.
As a quick & dirty experiment, I copied layer, applied a level adjustment layer to brighten exposure on everything. Then created a layer mask and painted with a soft round brush at opacity of 61% and flow of 56% to bring back some contours and shadows. It's not perfect but you get the general idea.
Hope that helps.
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Hi, you had very strong contrast situation/scene and you've done almost good work with exposition etc. (IMHO). If you go to curves you could see a little bit overeposed red ch., not OK contrast for green and blue (in RGB that I'd frefer for this img, not CMYK or LAB). I've done few clicks with curves to up shadows (dog etc.), down red overexp.(sun&sky) and set BB acc. to *grey* stowns (of course, they are not in such light cond.)) for illustration only (it'd prefer to work with RAW, not JPG preview) - like Den Margulys recommends us:))
AND I'm (as a photographer with almost 40 years experience, in general, from film times)) realy wondering of current Adobe Stock *experts* and their rejections. If they are only iphone shoters for *insta* I can accept that they do not understand/know what is right exposition (w/o strong highlights overexp.), contrast, DOF, esp. for telelenses, BB etc., etc. Even digital amateur newcomers know well enough such basics.
For example, look at this Adobe Stock *bestsellers*:
- https://stock.adobe.com/uk/images/picturesque-sunset-over-a-mountain-valley-background-wallpaper/521... with strong highlights overexp./not OK hystogram, strange BB and blicks/reflections from chip filter (lens).
-https://stock.adobe.com/uk/stock-photo/id/488327479?asset_id=490181289 what a hell is going on with highlights overexp. around painted/effect *sun* in dull sky?!! Lock at shadows and you'll understand in a second where true sun was! What about horizon and composition at all?.. I think that's not PHOTOGRAPHY..
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My last comment was related to another *shot* in the group acc. link below, so I've attached its printscreen for sure:
-https://stock.adobe.com/uk/stock-photo/id/488327479?asset_id=490181289 what a hell is going on with highlights overexp. around painted/effect *sun* in dull sky?!! Lock at shadows and you'll understand in a second where true sun was!
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I'm not sure how relevant the majority of your remarks are to the original post. I'm tempted to move it to a new topic.
Keep in mind that many photos in Adobe Stock's vast inventory were grandfathered in from old Fotolio collections when Adobe acquired it years ago. Quality standards have risen since then. What was accepted previously, may not be be good enough by current standards.
Utimately what gets accepted isn't nearly as important as what the customer thinks. No sales = no royalty payments. Stock is a volume business, not a photography contest.
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Well, I could agree with only one key point: customer requests rule. Request for *insta*, for Internet. Because no one (respecting itself) polygraphy company accepts such *masterpieces* with histogram highlights cut. Standards are almost the same in 80-, 90-th, for positive slides scans, then for first digital camera (with very low DR) shots, etc. (I know that enough because I provided digital materials for polygraphy, scanned films).
By the way, I’m sure that even modern/digital expert would have certain experience with film photography, particularly would shot&scan certain quantity of slides to understand what is correct exposition, real (not corrected in dig. camera) shadows/highlights, balance between details and noise reduction for real prints (not for 100% screen view – have you ever seen on screen any 25..50..100MP film slide scan at 100%?))
And example in swimming pool mentioned above is about 30MP and I could suggest it was taken with modern enough camera (sorry, I havn’t EXIF). And such *result* could be explained only by strong amateur mistakes in picture taking and/or post-processing.
Hope for your understanding (as Adobe Expert))
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@Dmytro25720280qh4w wrote:
By the way, I’m sure that even modern/digital expert would have certain experience with film photography
Why should they? Digital photography is long enough around, that younger persons have no experience with film.
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Most 20-30 year olds have never held a film camera. Since 2003, digital cameras have outsold film cameras. Kodak stopped making film cameras in January 2004.
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My initial reaction is that the shadows are underexposed.
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I don't think there's sufficient light for commercial print purposes. See histogram in Photoshop.
As a quick & dirty experiment, I copied layer, applied a level adjustment layer to brighten exposure on everything. Then created a layer mask and painted with a soft round brush at opacity of 61% and flow of 56% to bring back some contours and shadows. It's not perfect but you get the general idea.
Hope that helps.
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I’m very sorry, but your approach/PS tools used are very amateur. As Adobe Expert you’d better work with curves to provide needed contrast for concerning details (in highlights and in shadows too). Of course, having in mind that in sunrise light conditions initial R and G,B channels are very different and require different curve modifications. Of course, in RAW, not in compressed JPG (I’ve used for example only). Your mask + amateur PS toolset approach leads to digitally not natural and flat picture (sorry again).
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I'm not doing a Photoshop tutorial. As I said, it's a quick & dirty example that took under 3 minutes, far from perfect. More of a starting point than a final product. 😉
That said, @Kirsten2571969029mz can take what she will from it. We are unpaid forum volunteers and product users. We're not here to do in-depth photo editing for contributors. That's the photographer's job. 🙂
To delve deeper into Photoshop & Lightroom, YouTube has some good tutorials by Photoshop Training Channel (PTC) and piXimperfect.