This the new version of the image. Below it is the old version.

Chideock Church - the original edit

The image I had produced was not the black and white image I wanted.

I wanted the image to stand out from the dark and dramatic background. I wanted a dark moody picture. I wanted it to almost feel as if the face of the church was being lit by the moonlight. Which it wasn’t of course but you get where I am coming from (I hope). The mood and feel was not right. It was not dramatic enough.

This stuff matters to me!

As the editing process in Nik Silver Efex Pro is not that time consuming, I decided to re-edit the image this morning.

And this is what I did.

Selecting a preset in Nik Silver Efex Pro

This is the bit that takes the time (if anything does in Nik). When I say takes the time I am talking a minute or two at worst. I can spend more than double that time removing loose gravel from a car park! In the end I went with the preset Full Spectrum Inverse. This gave me the starting point.

Filters

Filters are great. And there are only six of them. Just click on each and choose the one you want. For black and white with drama I often choose the Red Filter, which is what I did here.

Vignette

I was always going to apply a heavy vignette to this image. I am not trying to hide the fact I have done this. Vignette Lens Fall Off 3 was my vignette of choice.

Finishing Touches

Finally, I pushed the dynamic brightness to 25% and that was me done and happier with the final image.

Which do you prefer?

Editing photographs just for myself is great because I can pretty much do what I want and I can push the boundaries more than I would do for client work.

A quick shout out for Nik. I have said this before and will say it again. It is free from Google. Download it. Play with is. Experiment with it. Enjoy it.

https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

Rick McEvoy Photography Blog

Sunday 2nd October 2016