TheProcess

June 05, 2015  •  Leave a Comment

I always get "did you 'Do something' to that photo"?   My answer is pretty much 99% of the time "Yes".

In some cases I like the look i got when i shot the photo, but in some cases I have something in mind, a mood, or a look, or something.

For the photo of the Gem at Sunset I took the other day, I wanted something super saturated in color, with lots of orange, and the feeling of the wetness of the ground, and more.

I didn't have the time to do as much editing to it as I would have liked, so I spent some time editing a slightly different angle shot.

What I want to show you is my "process", how I get from "OOC - Out of Camera" to Final Image.

If you are not into photography, thats cool, just check each photo and see how it changes from image to image.

If you ARE into photography, read the details on what steps I took to get to that particular image.


Step 1:  OOC - Out Of Camera

This is the shot as it comes out of the camera, with little to no cleanup at all.
Out Of CameraOut Of Camera
You will notice how dark it is and that there is very little color in this.  But this was the shot as I took it. 

 

Step 2:  Lightroom adjustments

With just a little adjustment in Lightroom you can vastly improve your image.  I used "auto" on the Tone, and then tweaked that some till I got the image looking like below:
After Lightroom AdjustmentsAfter Lightroom Adjustments


Step 3:  Photoshop cleanup

Decided to remove some things, like some of the cars, the street signs, fix the distortion of the buildings and straighten things up.


I liked the cleaner look, no bright orange signs, this took a while to "stamp" out the offensive items. LOL

 

Step 4:  Adding some color

So, its not a bad photo at this point, it just isn't the deep dark orange super saturated photo i wanted. so... 
In Lightroom I added some gradient orange fills, 3 or 4 actually. on the sky, on the ground, using V6's ability to Brush out some of these, i removed areas on the buildings and the GEM sign so that it didn't turn everything orange.

After LR GradientsAfter LR Gradients

 

Step 5:  Layering

Still not that "deep" orange I wanted, so into PS we go, duplicated the layer, using "multiply" then made a masking layer and removed a lot of the places where it was just way to dark, then made the whole layer about 65% transparent. Photoshop Layer MaskPhotoshop Layer Mask Combined layers from PSCombined layers from PS
The above image is pretty dang close.  

 

 

Step 6:  Topaz Impression

To kind of "smooth things out" and get rid of some of the noise (junk) in the shot, I took it into Topaz Impression, and played with some of the settings to get the look i wanted (OKeff to start). 

Topaz ImpressionTopaz Impression
Didn't want 100% of this look as it makes it too much of a painting, so I dropped the opacity to 50%. Giving me the image below (with a little Lightroom adjustments).

After TopazAfter Topaz

 

Step 7:  Adding some "light"

Almost there, not bad, but the street lights were not on yet, and I think if we add some "orange" to it (via lightroom's brushes) it would give it a really cool look.  After adding a orange tint to the lights, I took the radial filter and added some orange glow around the lights to give the impression of light emitting from these street lamps.

Before is on the Left / After is on the Right.

Lightroom - adding "LIGHT" to the street lampsLightroom - adding "LIGHT" to the street lamps

 

Step 8:  All done!

Here is the "final" image, after all the above cleanup.  Thoughts? comments? input?

Sunset Gem 2Sunset Gem 2Gem Theater and street at sunset

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this entry.

Please let me know what you think.

David

 


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