Hi all,

I've just returned from a four-day trip to the Rockies (Jasper to Banff
and back). I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, and of course my
camera came along. Most of the pictures I got are your typical
postcard/calendar photos of "a mountain, a lake, and some trees".

Here's the problem. I'm looking at the RAW files, and I'm having
trouble getting them to look right (where "right" is defined as "the
way I remember the scene"). I've been fiddling around (I don't have a
whole lot of expertise with RAW, and I've never done this sort of
scenery before), and I'm having a serious problem with greens that I
can't resolve.

First, the colour of the water is entirely wrong. Rivers and lakes
formed from glacial meltwater have a beautiful deep green colour, but
in most of my photos straight off the camera, the water is a fairly
ordinary brown/grey - the green/turquoise seems to have vanished. I'm
having exactly the opposite issue with foliage: trees and moss appear
(to my eye) to be extremely - almost comically - oversaturated.

I'm having problems with detail missing from the sky as well, but that
seems to be a simple dynamic range issue, and I can deal with it.

So, I'm trying to work with the photos so that they look "real" - I
want them to represent the scene as I saw/remember it. In general,
increasing the contrast and saturation, and warming the colours a bit,
seems to do a good job of getting the rock and mountains to look right,
but exacerbates the problem with the foliage, and doesn't seem to do a
whole lot for the water. Has anyone dealt with this sort of problem
before?

The problems aren't endemic - some of the shots look just fine, and
others exhibit some of the problems but not others. But the same issues
are coming up very frequently, and I'm not sure what to do about them.

The shooting conditions were: Rebel 300D with 18-55 kit lens, no
filters. All shots were RAW, ISO 100-200, with manual exposure, and I
was careful that highlights were not blown out (especially the sky).
The lighting was all natural light, generally with at least some cloud
cover or fog (that is, the sun was normally partially or completely
obscured).

None of the pictures are anything special from a critical perspective,
but they're my vacation pictures, and I want them to look as good as
possible. I can post some samples (CRW or JPG) later if anyone's
interested - I'm just tossing out this post before going to bed.

Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks,
- Darryl