articles/Monochrome/digitalmonochrome-page9

Digital Monochrome - part 9 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/02/2012

Fig 22/23 The last, and very critical adjustment I made to the image, was to the river. For this I selected the body of moving water, being very careful not to include the darker areas of the boulders I had just worked hard to recover, and applied quite an extreme curve to make the water look 'wetter'. You can see from the curve line I have darkened the darker tones considerably then pegged back the highlights. This is a process that I feel is always needed in monochrome images containing water as the recorded values always look somewhat flat and silvery. Bearing in mind, you may recall, I also used a polariser during the exposure!

So there we have it. The journey I follow in converting a pretty drab camera RAW file into a black and white image that does the moment justice. I would of course resize the image and apply a little unsharp mask probably excluding the water as water NEVER looks gritty! The most important aspects to remember are understanding what colour information you have at hand to enhance, and before you even begin selections and curves, identify your 'working zones' otherwise how can you possibly create without knowing what you want the finished piece to be and 'say' .

Oh one last tip...set your camera up somewhere quiet and secluded!!

• Digital Monochrome page 1
  
• Digital Monochrome page 2
  
• Digital Monochrome page 3
  
• Digital Monochrome page 4
  
• Digital Monochrome page 5
  
• Digital Monochrome page 6
  
• Digital Monochrome page 7
  
• Digital Monochrome page 8
  
• Digital Monochrome page 9
  

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