Revisit and Retouch

Over at the CameraPorn site - and yes I can’t get to it at work - is having a retouch project (Similar to the Edit my Photo Seagull project that EpicEdits had late 2007 - here’s my entry to that) but this one involves a much more fun subject in my opinion. We are even given three bracketed* images to play with as well - even though I only used the middle one. I think my skills have grown slightly since then, what do you think?

*bracketing means three different exposures are taken of the same shot (I think!)

You can see the progress of the work on the right hand side (thank you Lightroom history!) as I work through but here on the left are the settings (at the bottom is the full picture).

As you can see I can’t resist playing with the settings (although I didn’t use my staple strong contrast and punch combo - or any of the presets from Inside Lightroom). I started but touching up the white balance slightly (although I dont’ think there’s any visible difference. Then I dropped the exposure slightly (but not as far as the lower bracket photo.) I complemented this with some highlight recovery and pushing up the blacks slightly.

I also through up the contrast and saturation, and touched the clarity down a little. Now we’re looking all sunsetty™ but the colours aren’t “right” yet. so lets richen them up…

The main colours that drew me was the golden yellow of the doors on the giant drums, and the deep purple sky. So to bring that out I touched the shadow hue in the split toning slighty to the right and bump up it’s saturation. likewise the purple sky highlight is drawn out with the highlight hue and saturation. Bringing the balance down also warmed it up slightly more. Getting There!

Vignetting is old school but it heightens the image that this was taken when it was darker so that was noticed up accordingly. I know it’s a really old school cheat but in this case it deepened the idea of less light hitting the sensor so I think it’s worth it.

Lastly I bumped up the Orange saturation even further to heighten the warmth of the photo et voila! C’est complet.

I know this isn’t going to be everyone’s taste, so if you want to go a different way - go and grab the raw and process it with your eyes, I’d love to see what you do!