FEATURE54 +:0 | MAY 2017
HACK #5:
PAINTING FOR THE BEST
BLACK & WHITE IMAGERY
Triston says it was an overcast day when he went to photograph this
pond next to the Punakha Dzong in Bhutan, and the colors were muted
all around. However, he noticed there were several layers of details in
the scene that would make for a perfect black and white artistic shot.
Thus, he converted the image to a Black & White one in Lightroom
and adjusted the different color channels to bring out the best details
in each of the zones. Next, he applied the Radial Filter to various parts
of the image to bring out the shadow details in each of the areas,
using the brush erase tool to ÷ ne tune his changes by erasing some of
the Radial Filter out.
After that, Triston brought the edited image into Photoshop and
applied the Content Aware Fill to remove the people on the right hand
side of the photo, keeping the viewers’ attention on the subjects in the
middle of the photo.
Triston’s ÷ nal step is what traditional Black and White
photographers used to do in the darkroom – he manually dodges
and burns various portions of the image to enhance the highlights or
darken shadowed areas selectively.
So there you have it, ÷ ve hacks for different types of lighting
scenarios that you may encounter. Check out our digital edition for
additional content exclusive to this story.