Ben Hawkins is the former editor of Practical Photography magazine and an award-winning writer and journalist with 20 years of publishing experience. His favourite photographers are Albert
Watson, Helmut Newton and Sarah Moon, and he’s currently binge-watching Vikings for the ninth time.
BEN SUGGESTS HOW TO IMPROVE THIS SPECTACULAR SUNRISE SCENE
1 Adjust the crop
Select the Crop Tool, select Original Ratio
from the dropdown menu and drag the crop
box in from the top-right corner until the
middle gure sits in the centre of the frame.
Use the Rule of Thirds overlay option to help
you. Fine-tune the crop using the double-
ended arrows that appear when you hover the
cursor over the corners of the cropping box.
2 Tone down colour
To tone down colours, click on the Create
new ll or adjustment layer icon in the
Layers palette and select Hue/Saturation
from the dropdown menu. Slowly drag the
Saturation slider to the left until the overall
colour palette appears more realistic. For
Zay’s image, Saturation was set to just -10
because I didn’t want to lose too much of
the original drama.3 Add a little contrast
Reducing saturation can also decrease
contrast, so, to add this back in, return to the
Create new ll or adjustment layer icon and
this time select Curves. Create a subtle
S-shape by clicking three-quarters of the way
up the line and dragging it up very slightly,
and then a quarter of the way up and
dragging the line down. Be careful not overdo
this, as the smallest adjustment can make a
huge difference.AFTER