Digital Photo Pro - USA (2020-02)

always used the control’s color slid-
ers to adjust tonal relationships: a
red element that might be rendered
too brightly in the black-and-white
conversion could be darkened by
pulling down the red slider; a blue
element that might be rendered too
darkly could be lightened by pulling
up the blue slider. After the conver-
sion, I’d usually go into Photoshop’s
very useful Shadows/Highlights con-
trol (Image>Adjustments>Shadows/
Highlights) to adjust the overall bal-
ance of bright and dark areas.
Despite the benefits of HDRI and
Shadows/Highlights, most of the
images’ real tonal control began when
I opened up the Nik Viveza plug-in in
Photoshop and used its “control points”
throughout the image. (The Nik Suite
is now marketed by DxO.)
Viveza is basically like old-fash-
ioned dodging and burning in,
which of course you can do “manu-
ally” in Photoshop, except t hat it pro-
vides much more control. In addition

to letting you adjust brightness

(density), it gives you local control

over contrast, shadow detail, color

saturation and color balance among

several other things. These changes

can be made globally in addition to

locally. In fact, before making any

local adjustments, I sometimes used

Viveza globally to increase overall

contrast; I often raised the contrast

higher than I would have with Pho-

toshop’s regular contrast controls,

then “filled in” by increasing Vive-

za’s Shadow Detail slider. This gave

me more punch than I could other-

wise have achieved, without block-

ing up shadows. I also increased

Structure globally. Structure is a

very useful, slider-based Viveza con-

trol that improves the sense of tex-

ture and clarity.

I found myself placing scores, often

over a hundred, and sometimes even

several hundred, Viveza control points

in a given image to make the local

adjustments I wanted. In fact, at times,

I had to make myself stop, or else an

image would end up looking com-

pressed in its tonal scale!

I’d place a point in the middle of

an area I wanted to fix, use the point’s

main slider to set the circumference of

The work is

also a study, by

implication,

of an obsessive-

compulsive

mind, yet more

generally of

the hoarding

behavior that

seems epidemic

in our society.

Straw Baskets with Oasis Inserts

40 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com