Who is Steve McCurry. If you don’t know his name, you can be sure to know at the least one image by him. The National Geographic cover ‘Afghan girl’ is one of the most iconic magazine covers ever printed, however Steve McCurry has hundreds, if not thousands of portrait images that are just as hauntingly beautiful. So what is it about his images that is so engaging.

Analysing Steve McCurry’s work

• When you see any portrait of his, the first thing you notice is the eye contact. His subjects look directly into his lens with self assurance. No matter how torn the clothes they wear are, McCurry’s images allows their inner strength, uniqueness and most profoundly, their dignity to shine through.
• The next thing you notice is the lack of distractions. Any detail in the background supports the feel he is trying to convey in the image.

• Colours tend to be quite vibrant but with the skin tones very subtle.

• Shadows are very dark. There is limited detail to distract from the subject.

Why create photographs in a famous photographers style?

That is a stunning question, after all, the last thing you want is for people to say your work looks like …… Insert famous photographer name here …
The thing is that you can learn so much about photography by emulating the styles of the photographers you admire. Spend time analysing their work. Understand their vision. Learn how they edit their work. BUT… Don’t just do this for one photographer. Do it for many and then once you understand their processes you can mix, match and adapt their techniques with your own spin, to create something that is uniquely yours.

Have a look at our ‘How to photograph like‘ series to see other great photographers like Edward Weston, Michael Kenna, Ansel Adams and Arnold Newman.

So here is how to photograph like Steve McCurry

The image choice

I am using a photograph Ally made of a flower seller in the centre of Cape Town, South Africa and will try to “McCurryfy” it as much as possible. In McCurry’s images the subjects are usually looking directly into the lens, usually seriously. In Ally’s image the woman is looking directly into the camera. Like Steve, Ally has an amazing way of making her subjects feel comfortable in front of the lens so this image was an obvious choice as an example of how to photograph like Steve McCurry.

The first thing I will do is to crop the image down to a headshot. Most of Steve McCurry’s images are tight headshot images and although he usually crops to portrait format there are a few landscape (environmental) style in his portfolio of images.

I wanted to subtly keep the flowers in the image as the tell a story about the woman.

“What matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling” Steve McCurry

The Raw edit

As you can see the original image directly from the camera was totally flat so I set about adding contrast, clarity and vibrancy to the whole image just to get it looking acceptable.

Once the basic edit is done I went to the adjustment brush and lightened and darkened various areas (Dodge and Burn). To add more saturation to the clothing I increased the vibrancy. Once happy with the Raw edit I opened the file into Photoshop.

When looking at how to photograph like Steve McCurry, one of the main things one notices is the lack of inappropriate objects in the background. Now where he would normally change his viewpoint to adjust what he is seeing, we will use Photoshop’s tools to remove unwanted details. The Content-Aware Fill is a perfect tool for this. Just choose Fill from the Edit menu and then Content-Aware from the drop down menu. If you’re already an experienced Photoshop user you can use the Content-Aware Fill option directly from the Edit menu. This will open a new window allowing you to choose what areas you would like the software to use or ignore when doing the fill. It can also put the result on a new layer for you.

Lastly I noticed that all Steve McCurry portraits have one thing in common. There are large reflections in the eyes. When photographing I would normally use a large white reflector to add soft light into the face and it would also create beautiful reflections in the eyes. We couldn’t do that in Cape town as we only had a few minutes and as the area was deserted our guide was getting worried about us flashing expensive equipment around, so Ally had to work very fast.
To get around this problem I created a new layer in Photoshop and used a small paintbrush with white paint to paint in the reflections. After painting them in I reduced the opacity slightly to give a more realistic look.

Finally

Throughout this whole How to photograph like Steve McCurry tutorial I have shown you how to emulate him but don’t just go out and copy a photographer’s style. They are the master of that style and you will never be any better than second best. Get to understand as many photographers’ shooting and editing styles as possible and then take the best feature and mix with your own style to create something that is totally uniquely you. There can never be anyone better at your own style than you.

Click here for special deals on Tim’s Udemy course for Photoshop on the iPad and Affinity Photo v2 on the iPad

The post How to photograph like Steve McCurry appeared first on ImageExplorers.

In this post I will show you the photography editing steps I went through to turn a mundane image into something that brings me a lot of joy and is the image I pre-visualised.

Let me show you how it was done

When you are out photographing do you ever find yourself looking at the scene but visualising a result that doesn’t quite tally with what you see in front of your eyes. This was my experience when my son and I went photographing along the Jurassic coast. If you haven’t read the post about our photographic mini adventure you can find it here. In this post I will go through the editing of the Jurassic Coast image and show you my workflow from RAW to finished file.

The photography process

It was a blue sky day with a few clouds on the horizon when we photographed this scene. Due to the lighting we decided to wait until late in the afternoon as the top down lighting is certain death to most moody landscapes and also, it is too bright for long exposures even with the ND (neutral density) filter on. As the sun went towards the horizon the clouds came up and we got to work.

I photographed various exposures of the scene with my camera on the tripod. The longest I was able to do was 4 seconds as even with the aperture at f22, ISO at 50 and an ND filter I couldn’t go slower. I timed the exposures to go when the small waves were breaking. This meant I could achieve a bit of the misty effect I was after.

I also did some other stopped-down images at the same time to expose the details in the clouds which were bright and would have been ‘blown out’ (overexposed) in the main exposure.

The Initial Photography Editing Process

I started by editing the raw files separately. The main misty image has some shadows lightened and clarity added all over.

After this I went to the adjustment brushes and brightened up and darkened down (burn and dodge) various rock surfaces to add a more 3 dimensional element to them. I dodged the water to lighten the mist and added texture with the clarity slider. To get the green “toxic water feel”, I increased the saturation on the already green water.

Combining the 2 Images

To get the dark sky into my final image I opened both images in Photoshop and dragged the dark sky image into the misty sea scene.

Pro Tip:

When you have finished editing in the RAW file converter hold down the Shift key while you click the open image button. This changes the button to open object. When your image open in Photoshop it will open as a RAW smart object. When you wish to change the image in Photoshop just double click the Smart Object layer and it will open the layer back in RAW. Total non-destructive editing.

If you photograph both images without moving the Tripod then they will be exactly the same composition and if you drag one image in Photoshop onto the other whilst holding the Shift button down they will align exactly. If however your camera moved between the images then all is not lost. Select both layers ( the misty image and the dark sky image, and go to the Edit menu in Photoshop and choose Auto-Align Layers. This will automatically align the layers for you.

I used a selection tool to select the sky area and then added a layer mask to the top layer. This hides the areas of the image that are not sky on the dark sky layer.

Final adjustments in photoshop

The last things I do are to add adjustment layers to bring the images together. My favourite is to either use a warming photo filter for a warm reddish tinge or use one of the LUTs. These are Colour Look Up Tables that can give a overall colour and contrast look. My favourite is the Crisp warm look LUT.

And there you have it. I finally saved the image as a PSD file so that all the editable items (layers, masks, Adjustment layers and Smart RAW layers) would remain editable.

I was rather pleased with the result. The final image was just as I had pre-visualised it, brooding and threatening as a Jurassic scene might be.

The post Jurassic Coast Photography Editing appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Have you ever seen beautiful old photographs with a blue tone and wondered how you could create the same? A romantic cyanotype photo can look so stunning yet is so easy to do digitally. Let me take you through the process and have you creating an amazing cyanotype photo in minutes. It’s a bit messy but oh so worth it.

Traditionally, a cyanotype photo print is usually created using ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide chemicals. The original process was invented by an astronomer, Sir John Herschel, around 1839. Of course, this was and still is a very messy process requiring coating paper with chemicals. This paper is then allowed to dry and then contact-printed (using your negative) onto the paper using a UV lamp or sunlight. It is washed and then dried. Lots of trial and error and not to mention cost. I want to show you how to get the same result digitally. It would be a shame however not to get your hands a little dirty so the first part of the cyanotype photo in digital will still require a bit of mess.

Some totally useless geeky info

Copies of architectural plans were named ‘blueprints’ because they originally used the Cyanotype process resulting in blue prints – now you too can impress your friends…

The preparation process or, as I like to call it, “Woo-hoo – I’m 5 again”

Ink, heavy duty paper and a brush is all you really need. I poured some ink onto the paper and painted it, making sure not to be too neat with the edges. When it had dried, I scanned the painted page in at a high resolution. I use 600 ppi at A4 as this translates into 300 ppi at A3 size. You can always photograph the paper if you don’t have a scanner. (Just make sure the camera is parallel to the inked paper.)

Cyanotype photo process – preparing the paper

Let’s get toning

While traditionally a cyanotype is Prussian blue and white, you can also achieve a slight yellow in the highlights by bleaching and toning. This split tone look is the one I am going for here.

Open your chosen image in either Adobe Photoshop Raw, Lightroom or Affinity Photo. I will be demonstrating in Photoshop Raw.

Original Image

After you have got your settings for lightness, darkness and shadow detail correct, you will need to click on the black and white photo button. Of course you can then still lighten and darken certain areas with the Black and White control sliders.

Converted to Black and White

Next step is to choose the toning tab. I added a small amount of yellow in the highlights, and more blue in the shadows.

Split tone sliders in raw for cyanotype colour

With Cyanotype photo colour tone

Creating the digital painted frame look

Open up the scanned image in Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Bring in your toned image. Drag or copy/paste the scanned inked paper onto the toned image.

Paste Painted paper scan onto cyanotype photo

Now for the magic … set the paper layer mode to Screen. Ta-da. A beautiful cyanotype photo with a hand painted paper edge replicating hand-made sensitised paper.

Set layer to screen for Cyanotype photo emulsion look

Useful Geeky Info about Modes

Simply put, the Screen mode hides the black on the layer. It is the opposite of Multiply which hides the whites.

Cyanotype photo with emulsion paint effect

A Reversed Background

The reversed background is nothing like a Cyanotype photo but still quite cool. If you wished to have the image look like it was painted onto a black background you could invert the paper layer and then set the paper layer mode to Multiply.

Original paper layer as used in cyanotype print

Paper layer as used in cyanotype print inverted

Convert mode to multiply for cyanotype on black paper

Variations on the theme

This Cyanotype photo technique has so many variations when it is done digitally. Why not try painting on various surfaces to get interesting textures on you photographs. Create other interesting split tones or even use it on full colour images. As always remember. A Black and White toned image will not rescue a boring photograph but a good photograph can be made even better with sympathetic tones. Mostly, have fun.

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The problem with the Vatican Museum Staircase photography is people. From opening time until closure during the summer, there is a constant stream of tourists descending this beautiful architectural masterpiece. A plethora of photographers at the top are also trying to get the same image. So what do you do?

 Drag the centre slider to see Before and After.

Initial thoughts and photography

My initial thoughts when photographing the stairs was to have an empty graphical spiral however this has been done so many times I felt I would have just another tourist photograph. Still, I went ahead and made the images. I created several images from the same viewpoint as I knew I could ‘clone’ people out from one image onto the other. I hand held the camera – took a photograph and then waited until people moved before taking more. This I did a few times until I was sure I had all the staircase areas without people.

Whilst assessing the images on the computer later, I got a really, pleasant surprise. On one of the landscape format images, was a small child on her own with brightly coloured clothing that complemented the staircase so well. I hadn’t noticed her while watching the crowds on the stairs. I had to include her as I felt this would just lift my image away from the usual ones.

Doing the basic Raw

The first thing was to get all the images to be used into Raw. Once in you adjust the basic settings so the exposure, contrast and colour looked as I envisaged it, and all the images matched.

Before edit in Raw

After edit in Raw

There was a very strong light to one side. To fix this I used an adjustment gradient and changed the exposure until the area matched the rest of the image.

Here is the uneven lighting that needs work

Use the Adjustment gradient in Raw to even out the lighting

I went into the main image and adjusted the various areas with the adjustment brush to bring out more details in the shadow areas, and increase contrast and vibrancy on the ironwork. There is no magic-method that I use here. I just adjust areas as I feel, until it looks like I want it to look.

Use adjustment brushes to lighten or darken various areas to taste

Into Photoshop for some copy and paste

Once the Raw work is done I opened all the images in Photoshop and copied the staircase areas from the donor images and pasted them to cover the tourists. I usually copy more than I need and add a layer mask to hide the excess.

You can see the girl on a separate layer with a layer mask

I then copied the girl from the landscape image and matched up the stairs. No easy feat as they were taken from different angles.

• A quick tip: When you are trying to transform layers to match others, set the mode of the top layer to difference. When the 2 layers are exactly aligned they will turn black.

Is it real?

I am so very pleased with the final image as it was slightly different to all the other images of the Vatican Museum Staircase that I have seen. Even though it was a composite image I don’t feel as though I have cheated, as photographing a tourist attraction during opening hours can be a nightmare. However, I am aware that many people will not see this as a real photograph.

At the end of the day you need to decide. Who am I photographing for? In my case all of this Vatican Museum staircase photography is for myself and so as long as I’m happy with it, that’s all that matters.

Do it for yourself and forget what everyone else thinks!!

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The light meter in your camera is a very useful tool, but there are times when you need to know that it’s actually lying to you. So how you can overcome it? Exposure compensation to the rescue.

Firstly, let’s look at what the camera light meter sees. The light meter shows a scene as being correct when it averages to perfect grey. Great for most images but it means that if you’re trying to photograph a white polar bear in snow your camera will give you the perfect exposure reading to make the snow and bear a mid-grey. This is a perfect time for exposure compensation. By adding 1, 2 or even 3 stops of light we can make the grey go white and compensate for the camera’s incorrect exposure. Exactly the opposite for a black cat sitting on a black mat. We need to give the camera less light than it thinks it needs so that the cat will look black and not come out grey.

“But I don’t photograph polar bears and my cat is already grey”, I hear you cry!

Okay, so how about a sunset or sunrise? All that sun shining directly into the lens as well as a dark foreground, can fool the camera into giving you an exposure that results in an image which doesn’t look like you envisaged it.

Without exposure compensation (the camera’s ‘correct’ exposure), on this image of shipwreck in Cyprus, the sky looks too light

By using exposure compensation on the shipwreck in Cyprus we can make the sky more pleasing, but everything else is too dark, but we then use dodge and burn techniques to correct this. See image at end of post.

How about the photograph of your loved one standing on a beach in the shade of a palm tree? The camera looks at the scene and makes its exposure decision based on the sunny background so the small person in shade in the front is too dark but the bright sunny background is perfectly exposed.

Correct exposure doesn’t always mean a pleasing image

So how do we fix this?

Well, if you’re photographing in manual mode, you can just adjust your shutter, aperture or ISO a few stops to compensate for this. If you are photographing in an auto mode like aperture or shutter priority, or even program mode, then most cameras have an exposure compensation button.  This allows you to over or underexpose a scene to compensate for the camera’s light meter.

So far so good but sometimes you want the perfect exposure for the bright sunset so the sky looks beautiful. Not only that but you also want the dark foreground to look bright and vibrant too.

Well there are various ways you can have your cake and eat it.

Option 1 – Bracketing

This means taking 2 or 3 (or more) images of exactly the same shot with different exposures. Most cameras have a bracketing function built in, where it will take a number of shots, a number of stops over and under your original choice of exposure.

So what next? You open Photoshop and this is where the magic happens! Photoshop will allow you to merge these multiple images into an HDR file so you can have details in the dark as well as light areas.

Using 2 images of different exposures (circled in red) to create a third HDR image

Although one can do this in Photoshop, (you get there by selecting multiple images in Bridge and choosing Merge to HDR from the tools and Photoshop sub-menu), I would recommend using a different piece of software. Aurora HDR 2018 seems to give much more pleasing results than Photoshop.

Option 2 – Dodge and Burn

Use an image that shows the most detail in both areas. Lighten the darker areas with either a dodge tool in Photoshop or an adjustment brush in Raw (much better quality). Now darken the light areas with a burn brush in Photoshop or an adjustment brush in Raw. See our before and after tutorial of Queen Carolines Temple in Hyde park.

Similar image from shipwreck set –  with a bit of dodging and burning in Photoshop Raw to bring the ship and rock details to life

Option 3 – Shadows/Highlights

In Photoshop there is an adjustment setting in the adjustment menu called the Shadows/Highlights. This amazing adjustment allows you to lighten the darker areas and darken the light areas of an image. (You can achieve a similar result in Raw with the Shadow and Highlights sliders. You will also need to up the Saturation and Contrast a bit.)

Correct exposure doesn’t always mean a pleasing image – image copyright Adobe

Using the Shadows/Highlights tool as a form of Exposure Compensation

Finally, if your images show too much detail in the shadows and highlights area there are numerous ways of increasing contrast to get more “punch” but a quick trick is to use the Dehaze tool in Photoshop Raw. See a video tutorial here and our favourite Photoshop shortcuts here.

The post Why Your Camera Lies to You – Exposure Compensation appeared first on ImageExplorers.

The Avakas Gorge was super contrasty with direct sun streaming in and lighting some walls with a golden sandy glow. I exposed to get detail in the highlights knowing that I could rescue the shadow detail in the Raw file converter.

Why did I do this? Well I find that I can rescue detail in the shadows and the trade off is some noise (grain). I struggle to get back the super bright highlights that have been very overexposed. This way of working comes from my film days of photographing with transparency. The thinking was to photograph for the highlights in transparency but for the shadows in negative film. I rightly or wrongly equate digital to transparency.

I did bracket this scene. This means taking pictures at varying exposures above and below what you think is correct, however never rely on your auto setting as your camera, as good as it is, doesn’t understand the scene and the context of the light. See our why your camera lies post for more details. See our post with more information and images.

What happened in Raw

Out of camera Raw file

In Raw I then did the basic exposure as well as colour and contrast corrections because I like to get a good starting exposure and neutral colour to work from. As you can see in the screen shot below I pulled the Highlights slider back to get more detail in the bright sunlit areas.

Basic corrections in raw

Next, was to lighten and darken various areas like I would do by dodging and burning a traditional B&W print. The difference here is that I can also adjust colour and contrast as well as exposure.

Area adjustments in Raw

A vast difference from the original with very little work.

Have a look at a similar technique I used on this London Temple.

Cyprus – Avakas Gorge

The post Avakas Gorge before and after appeared first on ImageExplorers.

As with most of our Cyprus photography, the approach did not fill us with confidence about creating spectacular images however once there it was a different story. Beautiful rocks, a quiet stream and wonderful Cyprus blue sky had us “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” all afternoon.

How to get there.

To find the gorge take the route out from Paphos about 16km at the start of the Akamas peninsula – it’s along the west coast and you’ll eventually pick up signs for Avakas Gorge. As you are approaching the steep drive down to the nature trail you will see a strange castle looking type building. This is a beautiful restaurant where you eat al fresco whilst being shaded by the vines. and overlooking spectacular surroundings hills and gorge. Great for a panoramic. Just remember to book beforehand. Their chips are amazing and gluten free!

The entrance to the nature trail to get Avakas Gorge is found just around the corner.

Ally photographing Avakas Gorge

Avakas Gorge Black and White

It is a lovely walk in an area that is a nature and wildlife lover’s paradise. Wear good shoes and if you can, take a tripod. The gorge itself is at the end of the trail and at our relatively slow pace I reckon this took about 40 minutes. Of course we were stopping to take photos along the way.

Experiment, experiment, experiment.

The gorge itself is beautiful and depending on the light you can get some stunning images. We both spent a long time experimenting with images (as well as waiting for other tourists to walk past out of the shot).

So what if the rocks don’t have the spectacular golden glow you see in the photographs? Our before and after tutorial will show you how to augment the little you have in the post production process.

Avakas Gorge rock wall

If there are a number of tourists a good trick is to put your camera on a tripod and take various shots of the same scene so that you can layer these images up in Photoshop and mask out the people on different layers until you have a people free image.

The post The amazing Avakas Gorge floating rock – Cyprus photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Cyprus has a bit of a reputation as either a party island or a place to lie and soak up the sun but there is so much more to see and photograph. The following are 2 areas on the south west coast near Paphos so grab your camera and battered fedora and come exploring with us.

Cyprus shipwreck at the Sea Caves

On our trip back from Paphos and heading in the general direction of where we had heard about the famous Cyprus shipwreck, we noticed an incredible sunset about to happen. Unfortunately we were still half a mile away from the sea but with lots of hard acceleration and zippy corners we turned around the last bend and there was the shipwreck exactly where we expected. Coming to a screeching halt, I grabbed my camera and jumped out the car whilst Tim found somewhere to leave the car. The sunset here was phenomenal with a very interesting sky, and we both came away very very happy with the pictures we’d made.

Cyprus shipwreck at Sea Caves

I was shooting directly into the sunset and needed to stop down the lens for a reasonable depth of field. I have a pretty steady hand but when I feel the shutter speed is too low I usually find a rock or sturdy tree branch that serves as a makeshift tripod. We bracketed these in case we needed to use multi-exposures. This would allow us to get details in both the sun and cloud highlights as well as in the very dark shadows of the water. We needn’t have worried as we managed to pull detail back using techniques in the RAW file converter. (See how we did it on this picture of the Hyde Park building in the before and after section.)

Tombs of the Kings (but nothing to do with kings)!

This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 2 km from Paphos Harbour. Many of the tombs date back to the 4th century BC. It has nothing to do with kings. The name comes purely from the magnificence of the tombs. We went here not far from closing time but were told we’d have enough time to walk around. As it was just a minimal charge of €2.50 we decided to go in. It turns out that if you want to take time to photograph you do need a lot longer! There are a lot of ruins obviously, some more interesting than others. But if you go down underneath some of them there are some amazing images to be made. One in particular, with lots of pillars, with the golden light coming through was beautiful. To create more atmosphere, we kicked up some of the dust so it was hanging in the air.

Tombs of the Kings

To avoid being locked in we rushed our image making. It was late in the day and there were very few other tourists around. We photographed the last few pictures and ran for the gate only to discover that the attendant had already left. It turns out that the turnstile will still allow you out! Excellent photography tip: go late in the day and you can shoot towards sunset when everyone else has left and still get out.

You can’t beat a good Cyprus shipwreck and an old Tomb for some really moody images.

The post Cyprus shipwreck and a lack of dead kings appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Dubrovnik City Roofs with beautiful colours and textures

Our day on the city walls was slightly overcast with a tiny bit of blue sky. Initially this might seem a bit of a downer but in fact it made making images a lot easier because we didn’t have to worry about bright sunlight and harsh shadows. Of course, sometimes hard light can give you beautiful textures on walls, but we’ve compensated for this in post-production by intensifying the micro-contrast in RAW, known as Clarity.

Dubrovnik City Walls from Fort Lovrijenac

Starting from the Pile Gate entrance (pronounced Peelar and is the main entrance to the Old City) , we walked up and even though we’d spent a few days looking at the buildings, it was jaw-droppingly spectacular from this new angle. There is just so much to photograph, but you need to be aware every time you make a new image, of your composition, because it’s so easy to get distracted by the beautiful architecture and then you just end up recording the scene. The first half is undoubtedly the best. Being able to look down onto “King’s Landing Harbour” with part of the wall in the foreground, adding depth to the scene produces some spectacular images.

Dubrovnik City Walls

There are a number of cafés and toilets along the top where you can stop for ice creams and coffees etc. We really enjoyed photographing the oubliettes and produced some incredibly interesting and surreal images from these. For a slightly different view, so you don’t keep getting the wall in your shots, Tim ended up holding the camera high above his head, having first focussed and checked exposure, using the angled viewing screen on his Sony to compose the shot. This works particularly well on Tim’s Sony with an adjustable back screen, but is a bit more hit and miss with my fixed screen Nikon.

Using the swivel screen for a higher vantage point 

This is quite difficult because of the bright light and would have been worse had it been sunny. NB: A lot of mirrorless and DSLR cameras have the ability to transmit the live image to an iPhone or iPad and this can be useful in these sort of situations, where one of you photographs and the other directs from the tablet screen.

On one afternoon as we were sitting for a rest, just outside the Pile Gate, Tim thought he’d drop his Zeiss lens onto concrete. It rolled into a gutter of the same diameter, narrowly missing falling through the gutter and out the other side and plummeting down 2 storeys. Phew!

Pile Gate

Cable Car

Some great images can be recorded from the top of the mountain, looking down onto the Old City. To do this, you need a trip up in the cable car. Sadly we did this on the only day it rained. But as it was our last day, we still managed a romantic meal in the Panorama restaurant looking down over the town as the lights came on and illuminated it all. Romance 8. Photography 1!

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Queen Caroline’s Temple is a classical style summer house overlooking the Long Water, east of Lancaster Walk in Hyde Park, London. When I saw it at sunset I envisaged a beautiful temple with all the detail of the brick work against a blue winter sky. You can see this is not what the original Raw file shows.

Drag the line in the middle to see the before and after image.

Let us see what we can do to fix it.

The Image that I originally created appears to be under exposed. It’s not that this was an error on my part. I deliberately chose this exposure so I could get some detail in the bright area of the sky as I knew I could pull back detail from the shadows. It’s so much harder to get detail from the highlights as once its gone it’s gone. For those used to shooting film it’s like using transparency – shoot for the shadow.

As you can see from the image sequence below I open the image in the raw file converter (similar setting can be done in Lightroom). Why do I use Bridge and not Lightroom? Well I do a lot of work in Adobe Illustrator and Indesign as well as AfterEffects and Bridge works with all these formats. I will do a separate post about the pros/cons of each bit of software.

Original image in raw direct from camera

Straighten Image verticals

My first area to work on is to fix verticals, horizontals and perspective. I then crop the image to the correct ratio.

Crop image

Set up basic lightness and colour balance

Next is to sort out the lightness and darkness of the entire image. I use exposure and shadow and highlights sliders for this. Next comes contrast. I do use curves (not pictured here. I will do an entire post on using curves soon.)but also a lot of micro-contrast called clarity. Next comes colour correction. This needs to be done after sorting out your lightness/darkness as its easiest to correct colour on a well exposed image. I add vibrancy and saturation after this if it needs it.

Use adjustment brush to augment areas

I then go into the adjustment brushes and adjust any areas I think need it. For you traditional film photographers this is like your dodging andd burning stage but with so many more options. You can see how I brought back detail in the building and increased the saturation and contrast in these ares. I did saturation/vibrance and contrast/clarity as these are usually lost in the darker areas of an image.

I finally keep this as raw file so I can always edit it later.

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