In February, I featured this image as my photo of the month; I took it in Buckskin Gulch, Utah on a cold, icy day.
Original Ice Underneath, January 2011
The original scene stopped me because I liked the chilly feeling in the ice, and the way the light was reflecting off the walls of the canyon; the tafoni created an interesting pattern in the flowing rock wall. In addition, I liked the sensuous line at the rock-ice interface. However, mostly I liked the contrast between warm and cold tones.
While I was happy with the original edit of the image, I have recently revisited it in an effort to accentuate the feeling the original scene gave me. With the current state of digital image processing, there are multiple ways to achieve my desired effect. Guy Tal recently published a great article on understanding white balance; understanding that there can be more than one appropriate white balance within a scene has been immensely valuable to me as my own processing skills have developed. Ultimately, I chose to use Nik’s Silver Efex Pro to give a slightly cooler color cast to the ice, thus conveying the contrast between warm and cool tones I originally envisioned when I was in the canyon on that cold January day.
Ice Underneath, rework, October 2011
While today’s cameras do an excellent job of capturing the “information” in a scene, there is still work to be done in bringing out the full potential in a scene during post-processing. What are some of your favorite techniques in doing this?
Incidentally, my friend Guy Tal does have an excellent and in-depth e-book devoted to this subject; you can read more about it at this link. Note that I’m not a member of his affiliate program, so I get nothing more than good karma if you purchase the e-book.
I agree that selecting white balance is purely subjective and can really alter the feel of an image. I like what you’ve done with the second one here Greg. It really defines the image and strenthens the contrast betweent the warm rock and cool ice.
Thanks, Russ! I really appreciate your comment on the post and the image! 🙂
Really nice image, Greg, and the two versions sure come across differently. I think I actually prefer the peachy pastel version, but the bold complementary colors are great too (and boy does the blue add punch to the orange in the rock).
It hasn’t come up too often for me, but I have occasionally double-processed a RAW file for different white balances in different parts of a scene. It’s a great option to have in the toolbox. Most of my creativity in processing goes into dodging and burning (usually through fancy masks) to bring out textures and emphasize or de-emphasize parts of the scene.
I agree that dual-processed RAW files are a great approach for more than just white balance. It can be a useful technique for many things, like balancing dynamic range, etc.
I’ve never been very good at dodging or burning; its something I need to learn more about.
Thanks, Jackson!
I think this is an excellent little article. This is captive landscape photography, this is taking control of your image from vision, through capture and finally to expression.
I agree totally that multiple white balance in images is an excellent technique to add depth and reality to otherwise inaccurate representation.
Thanks for sharing, and such an excellent repost.
Thanks so much for this comment, Ali. I know how you feel about one taking their image “by the horns” so to speak and making it truly what they want it to be…
Beautiful work, Greg. I like both versions.
A friend of mine recently processed a forest scene with a bluer/cooler white balance for the inner forest part and a warmer white balance for the outer trees. I thought it was a great idea.
Sharon
Thanks, Sharon! I’ve used this technique, although possibly not this boldly, on several of my images recently. I do think it adds a lot of depth to images.
Do you mean you used Color Efex Pro, rather than SEP? I thought that was a B&W conversion program, didn’t realize it could be used to change color. Could you tell us a little more about the process?
Thanks
Hi, Rick. Absolutely.
What I did was open the image in Silver Efex Pro to get a tonality in the ice that I was comfortable with. Once that layer was on top of the original, I set it to ‘overlay’ mode and adjusted the opacity to taste. I also masked out the sandstone, as I was happy with the original temperature.
Then, in Color Efex Pro, I used ‘brilliance/warmth’ to adjust the two variables globally on the entire image (I warmed the whole thing up slightly.
Lastly, I did the basic curves and levels adjustments.
Yes, Silver Efex Pro is primarily for BW conversions, but using the ‘overlay’ mode can add quite a bit of punch to your color images as well!
I hope this helps!
Greg
Thanks, Greg! That’s something which had not occurred to me, and I’ll give it a try.
Hi Greg, for my two cents I would say that the first image and second both are equally interesting, but the second is a bit more striking and memorable.
Thanks, David. As always, I really appreciate your feedback.
Hi Greg. Late for the ball again…but it gives me the chance to read everyone’s comments that I would have missed earlier. 🙂
I think both images stand well on their own, but the second has a much more bold presence and the color contrast is striking.
It’s nice to hear someone else using Silver Efex for color images. The luminosity blend also has a similar effect.
Thanks for commenting, Steve! Yes, I did forget to mention above that using the luminosity blend can have an interesting effect when using SEP.
Most of the time I feel that Photoshop (and its plug-ins) do way more than I could ever hope to fully comprehend. Its like hammering a tack with a sledgehammer most of the time, I think…
Gotta agree with David and Steve — the second one packs a visual punch that the first doesn’t quite match. Both good, second one stronger. Just my humble opinion of course…
Thanks, PJ. I appreciate it. Like Alister said above, I wanted to make the image say something instead of just doing a straight edit on it.
“Its like hammering a tack with a sledgehammer most of the time, I think…” Absolutely and all too often we forget to move our thumb. 🙂
It’s an excellent image, but I wish you gave a larger version so we could appreciate the details. (I know, piracy.)
Hi, Steve. Thanks for your comment and for stopping by! I can definitely sympathize with wanting to see the image larger. You can actually open these images in a new window and see them at 750px wide. I know many people are starting to see such small images as a little antiquated, but I feel its a good balance between size and not having to overly watermark my images.
If only people would not pirate others’ images–life would be so much easier! 🙂
Thanks again for stopping by!
I’m finding that some of the images in your recent posts enlarge when clicked, but others are apparently not linked to larger versions, e.g the two in this post.
Hi, Steve. Try these two images now; they should be linked to 750 px versions. Sorry about that…it was an oversight on my part when writing the post….
Yes, that helps. Thanks.