Sunrise on Ladybird Lake (Austin, Texas)
Yellow Rose With Water Droplets
Hello, again!
Here are a couple
of recent images I have been working on.
I spent at least a couple of hours on the Austin sunrise image. After
first making the usual adjustments (on a Raw image) in Adobe Lightroom,
I tweaked the white balance with the curves adjustment tool in Photoshop.
Still in Photoshop, I used the Topaz Adjust 3 plug-in to further refine the
image with the "adaptive exposure" and "adaptive saturation" sliders.
I then decided that I needed further adjustments to those adjusments because
certain parts of the image - i.e. the sky, were over - processed and needed to
be selectively toned back. I did this by creating a copy of the background layer,
and then created a layer mask on that layer. Using the brush tool at a low opacity
setting, I proceeded to mask out the areas of the sky that were overdone, until
it looked good to me. This is a common workflow pattern for me, especially on
my landscape and nature images.
Each image can present its own unique set of challenges. Sometimes, If the stars are
in alignment and I've been a "good boy", there are only a few minor adjustments I need
or want to make before I am happy with the way the image looks. that being said, no
image is ever considered 100% finished in my mind. As time passes, new processing
techniques and software will come on the scene, and I have to, am compelled to, is I guess
a better term, go back to earlier "finished" work and either start over from the original
raw image file, or take one of the unsharpened semi-finished images and try to come up
with something fresh and new that I may like as much or even more than the previous work.
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