There are a lot of resources, both on the web and in books, to help you figure out how to use whatever image manipulation software you have. So, I won't be posting tips for ACDSee users, Photoshop Plug-ins you need, or any LightRoom for Dummies type stuff.
What I hope to do is to inspire you to learn what your program is capable of, so you can make the most out of your image files.
Let's look at a raw photo I have on file:
A nice, moody shot of a famous landmark, from a camera angle that is fairly unique (most Golden Gate Bridge pics are from above or at street level on the San Fransisco side). Nice, but it needs work to bring out all its potential.
First, let's tweak that exposure. There is plenty of info in the file, so I opened up the shadow detail and toned down some highlights. Doing that made the famous red color a bit weak, so I punched up the burnt red color profile by re-sampling an exposure curve broken down into additive and subtractive colors (can't do that in any darkroom!) to adjust only that color. About a 5% add on the red curve (very slightly skewed toward yellow), and flattened out any blue/green tint. Next, the tilt was bothering me, so I moved everything 3.5 degrees counter clockwise. I cropped for a true 4x6 (usable in many enlargement sizes, too) without choosing to lose much.
Here's the final file:
Now, here's one where I did more color work.
Original file:
This is the melt lake below the St Mary's Glacier in Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
I first adjusted the exposure a bit, mostly lowering the entire value, and dropping out some of the non detail holding highlights. Then, I did colors. I enhanced the blue already present by sliding the vibrancy up about 10%, and adjusting the hue to a more realistic blue after that. Bumping up the vibrancy by itself would look a little too fake for what I was wanting with this photo, but can be a great enhancement for other types of subjects. Next, I sampled the deep, rich green in the middle foreground and applied its values to the rest of the greenery. (The distant trees are actually a bit blue/green because of distance haze effects, so I left those as is.) Finally, I cropped out some distractions on the left side.
End result:
The results in both cases is that a nice picture gets made a little more pleasing.
This post is geared towards a natural look end result. In future posts, I'll go over some other ideas, including special effects and false colors. People will be another subject altogether.
Hopefully you are inspired to play with your own programs and image files by reading this.
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