Kee Woo Rhee Offline Upload & Sell: On
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Here is the email I received from Sasha about the post processing of the image. I would like to share with all of you.
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Kee,
Here is your file, processed. I am sending it to you both in photoshop format, and in jpeg reduced and sharpened for web.
This is a challenging image to process, it was hazy, and sensor interpreted this light in a very weird way.
Here is the sequence of steps I used for the processing.
1. Open in Adobe Camera Raw, set white balance using river surface - since it was cloudy, it is very close to neutral gray.
2. Still in ACR: adjust levels, brightness, contrast, applied lens correction, reduced saturation on green and cyan.
3. Open file in Photoshop, sRGB, 16-bit color. Adjust saturation so that red is not too bright.
4. Transfer file from RGB to Lab color space. Add Curves adjustment layer, changed slope of the curve in channel a on 8 (top and bottom), in channel b on 10 (top and bottom). This simple procedure "separates" colors, bringing out everything that is hiding in between green and red in your image. So now the palette is wider, it includes blue and yellow, and red and green are better separated as well.
5. While still in Lab color space, duplicat layer, and in this new layer adjusted highlights and shadows on L channel only. I do it this way so I manipulate luminance only, but colors remain unaffected.
6. Convert back to RGB color space, and apply two layers with color filters with the masks, cool for the top, and warm for the bottom.
7. Now, I fix the lens flare on the left side, by cloning/grafting texture from surrounding areas. Not perfect, but did not want to spend too much time on it.
8. Crop the image to my liking, so that there is a line going from the bottom left corner, and river is at the lower right third. Cut off the top because it is distracting
9. Flatten all layers, save file in photoshop format.
10. Time to reduce it for the web: change resolution to 72 ppi, and size to 1000 pixels wide.
11. Duplicate layer, apply unsharp mask filter to the top layer only, with the following setting: amount 200%, radius 0.2, threshold 0. I apply this mask as many times as needed for the image to look sharp but not crisp, usually 2-3 times.
12. Now, I add a mask to the sharpened layer, and with a small soft brush (set to 10-12% transparency) lightly rub edges that seem to be a bit over-sharpened.
13. Now, final touches - with darken tool (shadows, 6%), I add extra contrast in some areas.
14. Convert image to 8 bit, save as jpeg.
Hope you like it,
Good luck,
Sasha.
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Edited by Sasha. Thanks!
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