Devil's Teeth

Image Processing Challenge
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I probably have hundreds of exposures of this particular composition but in the end I was able to capture the perfect moment in just one photograph. Tungeneset really is a special place with lots of compositions to discover. Since I don’t live near the ocean I was drawn to those that feature waves crashing on the rocky shoreline.

Raw File

_MMP3268.ARW (81.7 MB)

You may only download this file to demonstrate how you would process the image. The file is Copyright of the photographer, and you must delete the raw file when you are done. Please post a jpg of what you created, along with an explanation of what you did and why you did it.

My Edit (click to see)

Devil's Teeth
Devil's Teeth1366×2048 2.35 MB

2

I finally had some time over the weekend to have a go at processing this image. I find the whole exercise of editing images that I didn’t shoot myself rather enjoyable and because I don’t have the associated memory of shooting the image, I feel freer to take the image in any direction that I feel suits it best. With that said, here is what I did:

  1. I opened the image up in ACR and did some basic edits – white balance, exposure, contrast, shadows, and highlights. I also cropped the image a bit because it felt too tall.
  2. Then in Photoshop, I did some of TK’s LIGHTS and DARKS Triple Play to add some micro contrast to the light and dark areas of the image.
  3. Next, I brought the image into the NIK Vivaza plugin to give the image some more brightness, “structure”, and a bit of warmth.
  4. Next, I added a vignette to the image – I do this quite often on many of my images.
  5. Then I added a warm “Photo Filter” but just to the sky and land to enhance the warm/cool colour contrast that was already in the image.
  6. Then I dodged the white water to give it a bit more pop.
  7. Then a little bit of curves on the dark parts of the image to make them pop a little more.
  8. Next, I added a curves layer to slightly warm the image and then added a dark mask to remove this adjustment from the white water.
  9. And lastly, I used the spot healing brush to clean up the dust spots in the sky.

_MMP3268-NPN copy
_MMP3268-NPN copy1700×2380 1.92 MB

3

I really appretiate you taking the time to do such an extensive re-edit of my image @Tom_Nevesely :pray:

What I prefer in your version is that the foreground rocks don’t compete with the mountains in the background so much because you brightened them up considerabely. The color balance is also much more even, although I would prefer the image to be a little bit cooler in tone.

You definetely inspired me to take another crack at editing this image a 2nd time myself :smiley:

Quick question to one particluar step in your process. What exactly did you mean with “I did some of TK’s LIGHTS and DARKS Triple Play”? I use TK myself but I’m not that familiar with it yet.

Cheers!

Martin

4

Hi Martin and sorry for taking this long to reply. Tony Kuyper has the LIGHTS triple play and DARKS triple play actions in the actions section of his TK8 panel.
When you click on it (either the LIGHTS or the DARKS) it creates a group of 10 layers that have their visibility turned off. The top 5 are named (M)xxx – these are layers with a Multiply blend mode) and the bottom 5 are named (S)xxx – these are layers with a Screen blend mode). I typically start by turning on the visibility of the bottom (S) layer and the bottom (M) layer. Then to add more of the effect I sometimes then turn on the second from the bottom (S) layer and the second from the bottom (M) layer. If that’s not enough, I do the 3rd set of M and S layers but usually I don’t like to go that far. On the other hand if I find the effect too strong, I decrease the opacity of the 2nd set of M and S layers to 50% or so. Then to get rid of all of the unused layers (the ones with the visibility turned off) I click on the “lightning bolt” button in the TK8 panel and it deletes all of the turned off layers.

Here is an article from Tony that I think explains it much better than I have. Actually I just learned from reading it that I haven’t been using the Triple play actions correctly – I use them near the beginning of my workflow but the article says that they should be used at the very end. Now, I haven’t noticed any problems with the way I’m doing it but I’ll try it the right way next time to see if the results are better. Always learning, right? :slight_smile:

https://tonykuyper.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/stunning-shadow-and-highlight-details-with-the-tk7-triple-play/

1 Like