Digital Camera World - UK (2020-04)

RAW WAR

Warrior 2

Jon Adams

T

his is an interesting angle on the Florence Duomo. We have

multiple lead-in lines from the buildings on either side of the

street, drawing us into the base of the main subject. From

there, the eye is carried up to the dome, and comes to rest

on the lantern and copper ball at the top of the frame. There’s

nothing I’d change about the crop, but the shot is packed with detail, so

I’ll look to accentuate this to make the most of it.

I’ll then push the contrast up, to add lots of weight and mood to the picture,

and add a strong vignette to darken the perimeter, to really focus attention on

the dome. Finally, I’d think about losing some of the warmth and saturation from

the foreground buildings, so the colours don’t fight the cathedral for attention.

84 DIGITAL CAMERA^ APRIL 2020

3

De-emphasise the foreground buildings

The warm yellows of the facades lining the street are making the foreground buildings

dominate the actual subject. To lessen their impact, I paint over them with the

Adjustment Brush, taking care to avoid the sky and the cathedral. To make sure I can see

the area I’ve covered, I tick the Mask box to see where I’ve been with the Adjustment Brush.

With the area painted, I pull Texture and Clarity down to around -70 to reduce the definition

and sharpness, then take down Saturation to -60 to lose some colour. It still feels a little

too warm and distracting, so to really cool it off, I reduce Temperature to -35. This

adds some blue, neutralising the yellow tones.

2

Push contrast and

add a vignette to boost mood

I want to boost contrast to add weight and mood – but instead

of using the Contrast slider, I use Dehaze. Although its name suggests it’s

for mist-removal duties, it acts just like an aggressive contrast control,

and it makes a big difference very quickly. I push Dehaze to +40: this

works well with the enhanced detail to give rather Gothic results!

To set off the darker tonality and highlight the dome in the centre,

I click on the FX tab and adjust the Amount slider under Post Crop

Vignetting. I want a really dark perimeter to tone down the buildings

and force attention towards the dome, so I use a very strong setting

of -40. This would be far too much for most images, but here it

works effectively to get the mood I’m after.

1

Enhance detail

In Camera Raw, I reduce

Highlights to -100 to compress

the brightest tones and bring back the sky

detail. To reveal the detail in the darker parts, I increase Shadows to +100.

This brings out extra definition in all the lines of the foreground buildings,

but makes the scene a little washed out. To compensate for this, I ramp up

the very darkest tones by moving Blacks to the left. At a value of -20, the

scene looks more balanced, but the brightest tones are still a bit grey.

To fix this, I push Whites to the right, settling on an amount of +22.

To enhance the detail, I push Texture to +40 and Clarity to +20.

These sliders increase the micro-contrast in midtones, so give

the appearance of a sharper image with more defined edges.

Boost contrast

to add drama

Desa turate

colour on

buildings

Boost overall de tail with

highlight s & shadow