Well I hope you do. Ok I hope that you look at this picture and at least stop for a second and think – lovely scene. Even better if you think – I wish I was there when that picture was taken.

That is the emotion I am trying to get to.

To look at one of my pictures and want to be there.

This was from the same place the last couple of images I posted were taken. Such a lovely part of the New Forest.

This is my favourite picture from that location.

This is what I did in Lightroom.

HDR Merge.

There is a point of digression to make here – it is about De-ghosting when you carry out an HDR Merge. I will write a separate post about this. Note to self made. For this post I will say that I no longer leave Deghosting on. I only select it when I need it.

Back to the processing of this image in Lightroom.

Firstly I did an HDR Merge of the under exposed and over exposed images.

White Balance

Daylight was too cold. Cloudy was just too warm. So I went between the two. Actually As Shot was just in-between the so that is that done.

Don’t forget this is why you need a calibrated monitor. And this point served as a reminder to myself and I have just recalibrate my monitor.

Basic Panel

Exposure
Auto Tone in the HDR Merge gave an exposure increase of +2.35. Which was fine.
Contrast – I boosted to +33
Highlights – the auto set them to -100
Shadows – the auto tone set them to +70
I played with both sliders but put them back where Lightroom put them as they were just fine.
White +12
Blacks -14

I achieved both of these by doing the shift and double click trick letting Lightroom calculate the white and black points.

Clarity I boosted a bit to +26
Vibrance I boosted a bit as well to +19

Saturation – I do not use apart from a quick slide to the left to see what the black and white image looks like.

Next up was the HSL Panel.

Firstly, I used the target adjustment tool in the Luminance Panel to reduce the brightness of the blue sky.

I also boosted the luminance of the oranges and yellows a bit to make them brighter.

I did the same to the saturation of the oranges and yellows.

A subtle, barely visible vignette of -14 was next.

And then I thought about cropping. I cropped in a little, taking out a small part of the bottom and right hand side of the image.

Then it was dodge and burn time.

I didn't like the shadows underneath the front foliage, so I lightened them a touch with a brush with the shadows adjustment.

I also dodged the plants on the right.

I painted clarity onto the tops of the foliage on the right.

Finally I burned the light bits right down the bottom of the image.

And that was that image all done.

Well apart from a bit of minor spot removal. So minor I did it in Lightroom

And that is definitely it. No more edits. After the black and white version of this picture I am moving on to some more new images.

I will say this now. I am more than happy with this image. I really really like this image!

Rick McEvoy Photography Blog

Tuesday 22nd November 2016