I remember back in the day when I used to shoot in jpeg... Oh my... how happy I am that those days are gone. Back then, I wouldn't even had bothered trying to save this shot - there are just so many problems with it. I shot this in the morning, and even though the sun was shining, it didn't reach down to the narrow streets of Bergamo. The bright sky and dark alleys made for horrible light conditions. But raw is awesome, Lightroom is too and after a lot of tweaking I'm finally happy with this image.
In Lightroom I dragged the highlights down a lot, and the shadows up a lot. Then I enhanced the clarity and contrast. In Photoshop I ran my lens correction routine, cloned away the sign on the left and then moved on to Nik's color filters. I used detail extractor, contrast color range, skylight, cross processing and Indian summer (to add red). I then added a few selective hue/saturation layers to tweak the sky (too grey), the rooftops (annoying purple/green) and the cobbles (too blue). Lastly, I burned a few of the shadows a bit to make the contrast look the way I wanted it to and desaturated the skin tones of the pedestrians. It was the longest time I've spent on a single photo in a long time, but the end result makes me happy :).
/MrsHjort
Great job with the cloning and the bringing back of the sky. I still haven't made the move to shooting in RAW but I really should start doing it, I have loads of photos with blown out skies :(
ReplyDeleteAlso, lovely scene, looks so cozy and inviting.
Nice one Natalie, I like what you've done with the perspective, the colours bring it to life yet again and the casual, everyday attitude of the residents below make it very natural. I wish I had the nerve to shoot in RAW.
ReplyDeleteSuch an amount of work but defenitely worth it. I love to see how you breng back the Italianen colours.
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