A Czech Swan

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:12:36 +0000

I felt like making a post, and I felt like doing something to one of my photos, so this is what you get; An edited picture from my honey moon with Marit. I know, it’s pure candy with no substance, but I like taking those pictures every now and then. I was always meaning to edit the original photograph (on the left) and give it some contrast and vibrance (on the right), so I did it this morning. I feel it’s relatively successful, and I wouldn’t mind having it on my wall.

If you’re curious about my methodology, you’re in luck. If not, skip this:
1 - Levels on all the separate colour channels to achieve maximum colour neutrality and also the brightest whites and blackest blacks without losing detail. (holding alt while moving white/black-points helps)
2 - Curves to create the desired contrast. Because of the amount of work I had to do to get detail out of the dark water and the bright swan, I used two separate curve layers; one for swan, one for water.
3 - Hue/Saturation to remove that disgusting chromatic abberation that’s so hard to avoid on high-contrast edges. (mostly visible in full detail)
4 - Noise Reduction just to make up for the colour noise I get from brightening those darks up so much.
5 - Sharpen to give those edges a little extra punch.

Aaand that’s the general gist of it.

Magnulus dot com » photoshop

A Czech Swan