Tag Archives: Sunset

After-Before Friday Week 38

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First of all, some news to share:  two of my images were accepted as finalists in the 2015 Fine Art Photography Competition at the Herndon ArtSpace Gallery in Herndon, Virginia.  I’m told over 100 photographers submitted entries and 37 images were selected.  The awards will be announced tomorrow night at the Opening Reception, but I am just pleased to have made the cut. The two that were selected are shown below.  Details on the exhibit can be found at www.artspaceherndon.com

Kent Cannon Beach 2

Haystack Rock at Sunset

Yosemite-D-13-05-09-8714

 Clearing Storm, Yosemite Valley

Now, back to the regular weekly Friday feature sponsored by Stacy Fischer of Visual Venturing, a forum open to anyone with an interest in exchanging ideas and experiences about post-processing, sometimes called the “digital darkroom.” The submissions are often surprising, and always interesting.  For those who would like to participate, check Stacy’s site for the guidelines here.

As most people living in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the United States already know, the past several weeks have brought us more than our fair share of winter weather.  A week ago, the Washington, DC area set a new record low temperature, so what better time to see if  Great Falls of the Potomac might be frozen solid.   Short answer: No, not really close.  But I took a few shots anyway.

Robin Kent ABFriday Week 38 Before After Dual“After” Image                                           “Before” Image

The “Before” image above is the unprocessed RAW image from the camera.  I made a few corrections in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) as follows:  Whites increased to +44, Blacks decreased to -3 (to set the white and black points), Clarity increased to +28 and Vibrance increased to +25.  The changes were quite minor and hard to detect in the small sizes shown here (image below):

Robin Kent ABFriday Week 38 Before 02

Image with ACR Corrections

The image was then opened in Photoshop CC and it seemed that a Black and White version might be the best way to go. I used a Black and White Adjustment Layer (Blend mode=Normal) and selected the High Contrast Red Filter preset (which imitates the effect of shooting B&W with a red filter).  This was followed with a Curves Adjustment layer (Blend Mode=luminosity) and using the Linear Contrast preset (which adds just a slight increase in contrast).  As a final step, I made a fairly substantial crop to highlight a specific section of the falls.  The final result is shown below.

Robin Kent ABFriday Week 38 After

Final Cropped Image

Please check out the other submissions to this week’s ABFriday Forum here.  And don’t forget the OnePhoto Focus next week in its usual schedule on the first Friday of each month.  Everyone gets to try their hand on an image submitted by one photographer.

Next Post–Back to Antarctica

P.S.  In response to LensAdiction’s suggestion, the image below with a different crop is submitted for discussion.

 

Robin Kent ABFriday Week 38 After Feedback 02

Thoughts?

After Before Friday Forum Week 27

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Well, last week on the ABFriday Forum was great with everyone presenting a Before and After version of the same image.  I think we participants all enjoyed the experience of comparing our diverse interpretations of the same image.  Now we return to our normal practice of each person submitting Before and After versions of our own images. All of the other contributions can be found at Stacy Fischer’s Visual Venturing post starting around 8:00 EST so be sure to check them out. .

ABFriday Week 27 After-Before                                            After Image                 Before Image

As I started to consider what image to submit this week, i was struggling with the fact that the morning temperatures were in the 20s and heading down.  Although this might be a trifle for folks in the northern latitudes, it is really hard on those of us  who live in Virginia.  Then, my memory took me back to a January day when I had the good sense to be in Hawaii and the selection was an easy one. The differences between the two images above may seem small, but a fair amount of work was required to get from B to A.

Robin Kent ABFriday Week27 Before

 Unprocessed RAW Image

A larger size version of the Before image is shown above.  As usual, the first step was to engage the Adobe Camera RAW process (See image of the screen capture below).   All work was done in the basic window (yellow arrow) and the specific changes are identified with the red arrows.  My first goal was to minimize the bright spots in the sky and so the Highlights were reduced to -70.  Second, I wasn’t thrilled with the silhouette effect and did my best to open up the shadows by going to the maximum increase of +100.  The remaining changes were less aggressive: Whites reduced to -8; Clarity increased to +22; and Vibrance increased to +27.

Robin Kent ABFriday Week 27 Before Screenshot

Adobe Camera RAW Changes

The result of the adjustments are shown in the image below.  It seemed like there had been some improvement in the sky, and opening up the shadows had brought out some detail in the palm tree and some life in the water in the middle distance.  But two new problems had arisen.  The open shadow maneuver had revealed an unattractive road in the foreground and a portion of some kind of boat on the right side.  Curses!  Had I been foiled again?

Robin Kent ABFriday Week27 Before 02

Result of the Adobe Camera RAW Adjustments

But not to worry, Photoshop was waiting to show its capabilities and the image was transferred there. The next step was to  de-emphasize the road  in the foregroundRobin Kent ABFriday Week27 Before 03

Levels Adjustment for the Foreground

by selecting it (see red arrow pointing down to the selected area) and using a Levels Adjustment layer and moving the slider from 0 to 32 (Other red arrow).

But the problems of the boat and the still too bright segments of the sky remained.  The boat easily defeated the first attempt (Content-Aware Edit Fill) and so the clone tool was pulled out for action.  Removing the boat was easy enough and the sky was corrected by copying small sections of sky on the left side that had a light blue tone .

Robin Kent ABFriday Week27 Before 04

Using the Clone Tool

The final result is shown below.  Although a fair amount of work was done, the differences are small.  But I think they make it a better image.  The foreground remains unobtrusive, the small but annoying boat is gone, the water is a little brighter, there is just a bit of detail in the palm leaves to add some dimensionality, and there are no hot spots in the sky.

Robin Kent ABFriday Week 27 After

Final Image

I’d be interested in any comments and please check out the submissions from the other participants at Stacy Fischer’s ABFridayWeek 27.

Keep Photographing…..