Cayman Islands Fuel Depot
For best viewing, view on black screen.
This is my entry for the "multi-exposure, retouch and revisit" editing contest at www.cameraporn.net. Don't worry, only their web site name sounds fishy, it's a decent dSLR camera site. Just make sure you use the .org web addy extension.
Original photo copyrighted by Ryan Goodman 2006.
The purpose of the exercise was to take the three exposures provided by Ryan Goodman at www.camerporn.net which were taken at three exposure value compensations. One at normal exposure, one at 2 stops darker, and one at two stops brighter.
1. First I determined that I wanted to convert the color photos into a high-contrast sepia-toned monochromatic image. With that in mind, I made the following edits.
2. In a RAW image editor (which offers maximum editability before it's written to TIF or JPGs), I adjusted the exposures for three purposes: the darkest one for the sky, a mid valued one for the tanks, and a light one for the rocks and foreground ocean.
3. I also bumped up the color saturation significantly since the process I used to make the images monochromatic was to use color values to lighten and darken to create contrast. Finally I fine tuned the brightness levels of the image by using curves adjustments.
4. Once open in an image editor (post-RAW processing) I composited the images to layers on top of each other. I used layer masks to block out the portion of each image I didn't want to show. So only the sky layer showed the sky, the tank layer only the tanks, and the foreground layer only the rocks and ocean.
5. The one trick I love to use for exposure composites where a horizon is present is to use a gradient as a mask to blend the sky/horizon line into the foreground. So, that is how the ocean at the horizon gradually lightens as it approaches the foreground.
6. I then applied a channel mixing operation to turn the image
monochromatic and used six color values to lighten and darken areas. I
made blues darker, green, reds and yellows lighter, orange darker,
etc.
** I actually applied two separate adjustments with masks as I wanted
the tanks to use separate color value adjustments than the rest of the
image.
7. After converting to a monochromatic image (nondestructively using smart layers), I then applied nondestructive levels and hue/saturation adjustments. I always do this AFTER step 6 because the adjustments were specific for monochrome, and it wouldn't look good for color images. So I always "work" in the color space of the intended final image.
8. Once satisfied, the final adjustment is to apply slight lens corrections (straightening wide-angles, rotating the horizon to be level and cropping the image to a final proportion. The last lens correction was to add a "lens vignetting" to make the image darker on the edges and corners to lead viewers' eyes to the subject.
Hope you like it!
Rex
P.S.
I'll post a pic of my layer palette with the mask icon and layering
order soon!
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