Doug’s Post Processing…. This might be a new series!

I am a fan of photography. I love the creation of art. Looking at an object and thinking can this look interesting in a photograph? I also like tweaking poorly exposed images and seeing if something can be made of nothing. I’m not an expert, but I have lots of tools that I have fun with. I don’t use Photoshop, as I didn’t upgrade in time to keep the lower priced upgrades and I didn’t want to spend full price on the package when I already had tools that work for me. I primarily use Aperture from Apple, I’ve dabbled in Adobe Lightroom. In my mind it’s a Canon vs Nikon discussion. They are tools, use what works for you. Right now, I like the way the tools are laid out in Aperture and the way it interfaces with plug ins from Nik software and On One software. The two add ons I use most, they will work with Lightroom and Photoshop as well. So here’s my first post of my post processing flow.

ISO 1000 70mm 1ev f/10 1/800
Overexposed and washed out… but since i was in the middle of the highway, no time to fiddle!

Here are my initial adjustments to the RAW file in Aperture:

Straighten: -.45
Enhance: Saturation (1.05); Vibrance(0.20)
Manual Level adjustment on the left side of the histogram.

With a little tweaks the image looks a lot better. For fun I wanted to see what some filters from On One’s Perfect Picture Studio would do.

I chose the Radiance Glow filter in the Effects tab and then adjusted the effects layer opacity to 80% which provided a final image below:

I’m pretty sure I could have achieved the same result, bumping up the saturation and vibrance in Aperture without using a filter from OnOne’s Picture Perfect, but I find it a bit faster and useful to find what I want using the filter interface. I think it’s a bit more interesting now.