Light show...

... on my way home

[finished version on my [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1396716]Kinda Horrigans[/url] journal]

This shot looks like I just gave it a tiny crop, boosted the saturation and that was that. And to an extent - it is. But without a tripod or filters or generally being prepared pre-shutter, this was a shot which was always going to need just a tiny bit of editing to make it pop.

So, because I shot it in RAW, I could play with the exposure enough to do approximately what I wanted, which was to bring out some of the foreground detail as well as some of the cloud detail too. I processed the RAW file the first time for the sky, boosting the warmth while I was at it, and opened it in Photoshop... then processed the RAW file again, this time dropping down the blacks and boosting the exposure / brightness so that the foreground wasn't a big lump of black (though it's still fairly dark). Then, I copied this layer on to the other layer, and used a layer mask to paint out the sky in the middle and most of the clouds so that I had a more balanced exposure. I also used a 50% neutral grey layer set to overlay blend mode to dodge and burn other bits, again so that it didn't look so 'flat'. And a couple of levels adjustment layers - one for the top half of the image and another for the bottom. Both of these tweaked to bring out the contrasts appropriately.

After that, I flattened it, then used a new Hue/Saturation layer to pop the colours - boosting the saturation by +15. This type of layer comes with a layer mask, so I didn't need to add that and just used a black brush to paint out the saturation increase on everything but the sky. Finally, gave it a letterbox crop... and... saved.

Sounds like lots of work, but most of it is a) knowing what you want to achieve and b) the types of things you can do to get there. If you know a) and b) then c) - the finished thing - comes fairly quickly!

Tip of the day:
I really am not good with landscape shots - so, if like me you need some ideas where this is concerned, then '25 ideas to improve your landscape photography' might be a good place to start!