Monday’s Spectrum Exploration

After last week’s “Monday’s Spectrum Exploration” very much experimental approach, we’re going to more refinement in this episode. Also, I will write a bit more about the process used to create this image.

Let’s take a look first…

I expect that the first thing you notice is a more natural, blue sky tone in this image. Also, I brought a bit of color into the foliage as part of the process.

Let’s go over the process in a bit more detail:

1. The first step is to import the RAW image file into the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) utility. As part of the CLiR Mastery Course, I have a number of profiles installed that are specific for my camera. In this case I chose the Canon EOS 5D MkII CLiR Swap 3 profile, which takes care of the Red/Blue channel swap and produces a nice blue sky.
2. Now I let ACR open the file in PhotoShop, copied the layer and did a little bit of cleanup. There was a pesky little branch that went into the clouds and annoyed me.
3. Next step I took the cleaned up layer back into ACR; as I use Tony Kuyper’s TK9 plugins, this is really straightforward. In ACR, I look for a profile that gets me close to the look that I want, which was Artistic 03 in this case. There are plenty of great choices and, if you haven’t yet, I encourage you to explore ACR.
4. Then I create another copy of the layer and apply a bit of sharpening using Unsharp Mask. Another copy is made of that layer, which I blend using the Soft Light mode. This is a regular part of my processing technique; I always keep the opacity fairly low (< 10%); in this case I went a bit higher, as it looked great.
5. I add a bit of contrast and some brightness to get the correct feel.
6. Recently I started adding a Black & White layer with very low opacity. You may think this a rather odd choice, but I find that it’s a great way to control saturation in the image.

That’s all there is to it! I hope some of you might find this process overview useful. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.