{"id":736,"date":"2009-11-09T07:58:21","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T15:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2009\/11\/09\/the-making-of-a-photograph-part-3-photoshop-first-round\/"},"modified":"2018-09-09T19:07:50","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T03:07:50","slug":"the-making-of-a-photograph-part-3-photoshop-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2009\/11\/09\/the-making-of-a-photograph-part-3-photoshop-first-round\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of a Photograph Part 3 – Photoshop First Round"},"content":{"rendered":"

In part one and two of this series I described how I selected the file to work on and explored the potential of the image in Lightroom.\u00a0 The treatment I ended up with would be exported into Photoshop and we go from there.<\/p>\n

Read Part 1<\/a><\/p>\n

Read Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n

After trying several approaches particularly with regard to the color of the light I selected one that was very much like the unadjusted file.\u00a0 The only change was opening up the shadows in the valley floor a bit.<\/p>\n

\"Yosemite_4\"<\/a>Now the fun begins.\u00a0 While Lightroom 2.x supports local adjustments I prefer to do the local adjustments in Photoshop.\u00a0 I just feel that I have more control in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

The first thing to deal with is the silhouette of the pint tree in the lower left hand corner.\u00a0 I used the clone stamp tool to get rid of that.\u00a0 I have no qualms about removing things that distract from the image.\u00a0 But I draw the line at adding things.\u00a0 Someone asked me if I added the moon in Bristlecone Moonrise.\u00a0 No, I was there and that was the moon.\u00a0 What\u2019s the point of faking it.\u00a0 The experience in the field would simply not be the same.\u00a0 It\u2019s so exciting to take an image like this and think you\u2019ve got it.\u00a0 But there\u2019s always the nagging doubt in the back of your head wondering if you overlooked something and messed it up.\u00a0\u00a0 You never know until you get back at your computer to see what you really have.<\/p>\n

\"bristlecone_moon_2008\"<\/p>\n

But back to Yosemite.\u00a0 So the pine tree silhouette had to go.\u00a0 Also, I checked the image for dust spots and only found one or two.\u00a0 The spot healing brush took care of them.<\/p>\n

The next step was to do some local adjustments with Viveza.\u00a0 It\u2019s a cool tool from Nik Software that allows you to select an area and control brightness, contrast, saturation and more.\u00a0 The clouds in the upper right needed contrast enhanced a little.\u00a0 Next a couple of Curves with layer masks helped open up the valley floor even more.\u00a0 I tried some vignetting on the bottom and really liked the way it funneled the eye into the center of the image where everything was happening.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d need any\u00a0 vignetting for the top corners but tried it anyway and liked that too.<\/p>\n

I made some global adjustments too.\u00a0 Selective Color helped warm the reds with some yellow, lighten the yellows and darken the blues.\u00a0 Color Balance also shifted the overall color just a couple points to the yellow.<\/p>\n

Sorry I don\u2019t have images of each of the steps along the way but that pretty much finished up the first evening.\u00a0 The image was starting to get interesting and it was time to sleep on it and come back another day to take a fresh look at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Yosemite_1\"
\nOriginal Capture<\/td>\n		\"Yosemite_Edit_1\"
\nAfter Photoshop Session 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Here are the two side-by-side.\u00a0 It\u2019s starting to take shape.\u00a0 There\u2019s a little hint of warmth in the clouds and they stand out more from the background.\u00a0 The valley floor is better defined and the trees stand out a bit more.\u00a0 There\u2019s actually a subtle feeling of warm light down there.\u00a0 El Cap and Bridle Vail Falls also are more prominent and their warmer tones contrast more with the overall picture\u2019s coolness.\u00a0 You can click on the images to enlarge them.<\/p>\n

Even before I fell asleep that night I was thinking of what needed to be done next.\u00a0 As you work on an image you become satiated to the colors, tonalities and contrast and you can\u2019t tell if they are good or not.\u00a0 You also get emotionally involved.\u00a0 So it\u2019s good to stop, get away from it and return another day.\u00a0 Sometimes when you return you are pleased and other times you say to yourself, \u201cWhat was I thinking?\u201d\u00a0 When I get the latter reaction it usually means starting over from the beginning.\u00a0 We\u2019ll come back to this technique when you get far enough along to start making proofs.<\/p>\n

So come back for #4 in this series to see if I\u00a0 said, \u201cWhat was I thinking?\u201d or if I picked up from where I left off.<\/p>\n

To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Join me on an upcoming workshop.<\/a><\/p>\n

Become a fan on Facebook and follow along.<\/a><\/p>\n

(1051)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In part one and two of this series I described how I selected the file to work on and explored the potential of the image in Lightroom.\u00a0 The treatment I ended up with would be exported into Photoshop and we go from there. Read Part 1 Read Part 2 After trying several approaches particularly with … Continue reading “The Making of a Photograph Part 3 – Photoshop First Round”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,6,5],"tags":[32,15,13,48,10,43,93,262],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-how-to-articles","category-journal","category-photography-as-art","tag-california","tag-national-park","tag-photography","tag-photoshop","tag-ralph-nordstrom","tag-sunrise","tag-workshop","tag-yosemite"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-bS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3927,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/3927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}