CameraPorn

Editing Brian’s Photo

The Before

Lonely Bird – Before^

Brian Auer of Epic Edits recently posted a new project challenging his readers to post-process one of his photos, shown without post-processing above. Though I generally tend to sit back and watch rather than participate in blog projects, I decided to jump headfirst into this one because of the enjoyment I get from post-processing images in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and to support Brian and his excellent photographry blog. I used Lightroom exclusively for the processing, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

The After

Lonely Bird – ^After

For me, the big challenge to process this image was the washed-out colors and lack of contrast. To work with washed out colors, I originally tried to work with them, adjusting saturation and luminance, but I was not satisfied with the results I was getting. I decided to take another approach by using Lightroom’s grayscale conversion first. From there, the image was still seriously lacking in contrast. To work with that I used several adjustments including tweaks to Recovery, Fill Light and Blacks. At this point the image still wasn’t where i wanted it. I then used Lightroom’s targeted curves adjustment (ctrl+alt+shift+t on a pc or command+option+shift+t on a mac). I placed the target on the middle of the sky and dragged upwards, which increased the Lights within the Tone Curve Adjustment module to add contrast by brightening the sky.

At this point, I was fairly happy with the image’s overall contrast, but I felt it was still lacking a bit. I then used the Lens Correction tools within Lightroom to add a slight vignette to draw the eye into the picture, specifically where the bird is looking and there we were, basically done. I finished by straightening the horizon, applying mild sharpening and cloning out the buoys floating in the water.

Read Epic Edit’s “PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT: Edit My Photo”

So my first participation in a blog project on the books. I’d love to hear what you all think of the retouching job as well as your opinions on blog projects. Until next time…