My friend was telling me about the powers of a gradient neutral density filter for landscapes. I poked around a little on the internet. It seems most real photographers have a plate of graded glass which they place after metering for the exposure. I don't know how to do that, but I did find some websites online that illustrate how to apply a gradient on GIMP. Basically you can apply a gradient to allow more light from one section of the photo, and less from another. It can therefore be useful in fixing a photo with underexposed or overexposed areas. I decided to try the technique on a photo of Lake Tahoe at sunrise, which I took, but it's too dark in the foreground. I multipled another layer, and modified that layer to show more light and detail in the foreground (the shore). Then I applied a gradient mask to opacify the sky of the modified one, then changed the percent opacity to 50%, and flattened that brightened, gradient layer with the original. This melded to produce the products below. I still like the old one since it had a rosy sky. I can prob work on that.
Before
After
Hmm. On the small screen you can't tell the difference so much, but you can see that even the stones on the shore are more visible. The ski runs down the mountain are now apparent.
Links to how to apply a GND filter are here:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6411
http://www.gimpguru.org/Tutorials/NDFilter/
http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_add_the_effect_of_a_graduated_neutral_density_filter_on_a_photo_using_the_Gimp_graphics_editor
Hmm. On the small screen you can't tell the difference so much, but you can see that even the stones on the shore are more visible. The ski runs down the mountain are now apparent.
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