So I got some emails wondering what I meant by post processing in the image of the burial mounds from yesterdays post.  Seeing as I have not got to teach Nik goodies lately, here you go.

One of the many great filters inside of Color Efex 3.0 is the Pro Contrast filter.  It is great tool for “haze removal.”  Now I am not talking cut through zero visibility fog to see a subject that you could not see before, but a haze that looks like a light fog or smoke blowing across the image.

Before - Straight out of the camera

To start the process on finishing this image I went to the Nik Selective tool and chose Pro Contrast from the list.  Once it Color Efex 3.0 opened I played with the Correct Color Cast and the Correct Color sliders and ended up setting them both at 50% which looked pretty good.  As you can see below all the have from the photo is gone but I still have a gray sky to deal with.

With Nik ProContrast filter applied

Finally, I needed to give the sky a better appearance and for that I took the image into Viveza.  I  dropped a single control point on the sky and from there I adjusted the Blue slider to about 65% and bumped up the contrast a bit more (around 10%).  Now I didn’t want to have everything with a Blue tint so I hit the Brush button to open the selective tool inside of Nik so I could just paint the sky.  A few quick brush strokes later and it is finished.

Final - Viveza applied to give a blue sky

And there you have it, a quick fix for some fun.

BTW if you would like to email me there is a new tab at the top of the page that say “Contact Me”  I was having an unusal influx of spam so I went this route instead.  So as always feel free to drop me a line.  As well, as a little experiment I am going to open up the comments again.  Hopefully, I will not have to close them down again.

Ok, so when I say Spartans I don’t mean the guys in the movie 300 (however they were also cool), I’m talking about this amazing old 5th wheel trailer that is out at Cisco. We went and photographed it the other day, but when we got there this evening the light was just making it incredible. When I was photographing the images above I had in my head that old school Art Deco style that you see back in old travel brochures and posters. So I used a tool that I know could let me get what I wanted Color Efex 3.0.

Just as the last rays of sunlight dove behind the mountains they poured into this barely standing shack and lit up the window. What a great day.

Captured with 1D Mark IIN 17-40f4 on Lexar digital film

So we took the DLWS class out to the windows this morning out in Arches National Park. It was a great time and the light was great. The image above was of Turret Arch just East of the North window. I finished the image in Color Efex 3.0. I used a multiple filter method that I have been working on that I will include in the book, so if you like how this looks, you’ll so be able to do it yourself.

Tonight we’re headed back out to Cisco for another around with the ghost town. There were so many things there last time I know I missed something, but tonight I will ind them.

Captured with 1D Mark IIN 17-40f4 on Lexar Digital film