Critique Mt. Baker

I think you did very well, West.
It's a difficult image, not much colour or detail between the snow covered tops and the trees in the foreground.
I don't see much that could be done "better"

 

That's a wonderful vantage point. Here's a little different style for your consideration:

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Ken

 

1. Adjusted tone curve to increase mid-tone contrast and to move the white point farther to the right
2. Applied Dehaze tool to the blue area of the mountain and everything below except the foreground trees
3. Converted in Silver Efex using a red color filter and adjusted its strength
4. Tweaked the tone curve
5. Used control points to bring out detail in the areas attended to in Step 2.
   
6. Cropped

This was a really quick down-and-dirty approach. I have no idea why the lower part of the mountain is made up of rectangles. I also didn't attend to the halos I somehow created around the foreground trees.

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Hi Mike. Their seems to be a problem with your image,it's very badly pixelated for some reason?
Mike

 

I already mentioned in my post that I have no idea what is causing that effect. I've never seen it happen before.

 

Sorry Mike. I only red the steps you carried out to process the image. I didn't notice the footnote explaining the problems you encountered!
Cheers.
M<ike

 

West, what a very impressive shot.

 

I like the original best. The dark foreground trees stands out from the white highlights of the downtown and Alex Fraser Bridge (?).

 

OK, here is my try. Done in DXO-PL. A few glasses of wine since driving the software and now, so no listing of steps. The mountain pixelates very easily---probably a function of the small image size?

Not particularly good, or even any better than yours.

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I agree, overcooking is a problem.

 

Clearly, overcooking is the issue. One reason, however, I left my version as is is that I'd never seen that effect of creating rectangles from overcooking and felt it might be informative to show it to everyone. Having said that, I still don't know exactly what created the rectangles beyond the overcooking.

The characteristic that I like best of both versions by West is that the bridge retains clarity.

 

Yup.

 

West I drove over that bridge just a couple of weeks ago. It was nice to know I did not have to pay a toll anymore. Last time I was over it I got a bill in the mail several months after we used it. I like you first image best. It is sure a pretty view. I bet this would be great at night or dusk as well with the bridge and city lights.

 

Well working on a jpg sets its limits as to how far you can go.  
This is what I came up with, definitely not "better" than your b&w in post #1, West.

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I used silver efex, starting from preset high structure (smooth)

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