Page 68 - Photoshop User December 2016

HOW TO ››
Dynamic Range finishing for the heart
MOOSE PETERSON
We’re amazingly fortunate to wander our planet with our cameras in hand to bring back to others the wonders that we witness. It’s a very passionate affair, which greatly influences how we see and make our photographs. We all know the process we go through to bring back our stories in our photos, and we’ve all experienced the moment when showing our photos to others that we’ve said, “This doesn’t do the scene justice.”
If we could share our photos from our memories, they’d always look perfect, but we have to rely on what I affec- tionately call “the cold-hearted bastard” (the camera) to do the job. Compared to our eyes, mind, and heart, sometimes the camera needs a helping hand. That’s why when we’re processing landscape photos to try and bring them back to where they represent what we saw and felt when we took them, we must understand that the key to finishing is to know where we started!
Yellowstone National Park
There’s a magic to Yellowstone National Park, which is magnified when it’s blanketed in white. Many of its unique and subtle colors become emeralds against the white backdrop, instantly grabbing the eye and heart when bringing the camera up to take the shot. With expo- sure and white balance set, and all the wanted elements included and unwanted elements excluded, we make the click to the best of our ability. This gives Photoshop the best data in which it can perform its finishing magic.
For many reasons, the scene that you witnessed isn’t the photo the camera brought home, and once you understand that, you can quickly and easily bring that memory back to your photo. You could ask, “Which came first, the pixel or the egg?” You need to start by understanding that our mind’s eye sees all the right colors, whereas our cameras—which aren’t influenced by physiology, but rather run on numbers—can be easily influenced. In this case, it set the white balance lower than it really was.
Step One: I started by opening the NEF file in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and applying my Landscape preset (which you can learn more about in my KelbyOne class Landscape Photography: Post-Processing in Camera Raw and on my website). This preset is set up to mimic
Before
068 the settings in my camera when I took the picture. My
Step One
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