Technique
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
Michael Topham Michael is Amateur Photographer’s Reviews Editor. He’s based in Kent and thoroughly enjoys documentary, wedding and railway photography. See www. michaeltopham.co.uk
Cropping removes distractions and creates a stronger composition
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Harsh sun from behind the model has helped create some striking shadows
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Behind the
Michael Topham finds a long-lost image that he converts in Adobe Camera Raw ready for print
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very now and again I like to trawl through my thousands of photographs on my hard drive. Occasionally, I stumble upon shots I’d forgotten I’d taken or had dismissed as not being good enough first time around during my strict five-star rating regime. It’s rather exciting when you come across a gem of an image that you’ve never processed or printed, and I’d advise that others take a good look through their archive and do the same. When I loaded one of my old street portrait images of a model sitting on a flight of stairs into Photoshop, my immediate impression was that it wasn’t particularly well exposed and was lacking colour and vibrancy. A quick check of the metadata in Adobe Bridge confirmed that I’d spot metered on the model, which resulted in quite a high-key image that I felt could benefit from a contrast boost and subtle split-toning effect. The result of digging out an old shot and giving it a new lease of life with some basic editing has created one of my favorite ad-hoc street images, which has since made it into my printed portfolio.
Increasing the Contrast, Clarity and Dehaze sliders in Adobe Camera Raw gives the image extra impact
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Spot metering on the model’s face has resulted in some blown highlights
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PREPARING FOR PRINTING
1 Check the highlights
To check for clipped highlights I loaded the image in ACR and hit the letter O on the keyboard. I retained some highlight detail by setting the highlights slider to -50. After setting the Blacks slider to -50 to darken the blacks a bit, I increased Exposure (+0.70) and Contrast (+65) to give the image much-needed punch. 38
2 Apply a split tone
Not content by the tonality, I stripped the shot of colour by moving the Saturation slider to -100. For a more distinctive look I tried applying a split tone. In the Split Toning tab in ACR, I set the Highlights Hue to 40 and the Saturation to 30. The Shadows Hue was set to 250 and Saturation to 8 before refining Balance to +50.
3 Use the Adjustment Brush Back in the Basic tab, I increased the Texture slider to +40, the Clarity slider to +15 and the Dehaze slider to +20. Selecting the Adjustment Brush (K) tool and setting the Shadows slider to +25 and Exposure to +0.20 then brushing over the model’s face lightened it a touch and helped picked out the eyes.
11 April 2020 I www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
