A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
19 December 2018
There is a view of the city skyline from Diamond Heights that, as you come upon it, is striking. But when you raise the camera to your eye, whatever is striking about it disappears.
It's too far away to begin with and the foreground interferes. You realize your mind has edited the scene to make it more romantic.
Can you do that in post? Well, let's be brave.
We took the shot. We cropped the image to about 1/9th of the full frame. We straightened it. We increased Exposure, Whites, Clarity and added a bit of Dehaze in Camera Raw.
A dark ridge of trees invaded the image from the right, so we romanticized it by changing its hue (it's blue but it still "appears" green) and tonal value to minimize it. You might say we flocked the forest.
We never go that far with our edits but this was a challenge to see if we could recreate the feeling we have coming up the hill to its crest and seeing the skyline.
Which is far away. But this is pretty close to what we thought we saw. Which took our breath away.