Those of us who participate in the AFterBefore Friday Forum have full control over our destiny every week of the month—except the first week.  On this week, iInstead of choosing anything we want from our own images, we have the “opportunity” to work on a single image selected for us.  As the day approaches when the “Chosen One” is to be unveiled, this participant at least, has flashbacks to those days just before his final exams.  The eternal question: “What will be on the test?” looms ahead.

This week’s image was graciously provided by  Shane Francescut and when I saw it, I was speechless.  Well, not really, but I digress.  Let’s look at the image.

Original Image

After some thinking, I thought I would take a different tack from last month when I subjected the provided image to a lengthy sequence of exotic Photoshop devices that caused formal protests from the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Green Peace.  This time it would be a quick and merciful coup de grace.  Or, in a nod to the theme of OnePhoto Focus, it would be done with “OnePhotoshop Tool.”

But I cheated.  I had the RAW version of Shane’s image and made the standard exposure adjustments in Adobe Camera that I make with almost every image.  The result and ACR settings are shown just below.

Results of ACR Process

ACR Settings: Highlights: -100; Shadows: +100; Whites: +47; Blacks: -8; Clarity: +30; Vibrance: +30

Then, I opened an Adjustment Layer–>Curves (Blend Mode=Difference) and chose the Negative Preset. (Blue arrow in screen shot below). This has the effect of completely reversing the tonal distribution of the image.

Next, I set an anchor point on the diagonal line through the histogram and dragged the point left and down (red arrow).   The Preset Panel now reads “Custom” indicating I have made a change to the Preset previously chosen. The result is show below.

Fiunal Result

That’s it.  I kind of like it.  Anyway, it didn’t take long –Less than 2 minutes, counting the ACR steps.

Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions are appreciated.  But be sure to zip over to Visual Venturing to see what everyone else did.