For a very long time, I refused to do anything in Photoshop that I couldn’t replicate in the darkroom. The reason for this was that I intended to sell all of my images from darkroom prints, including the color pictures. Then I lost my darkroom, and bought a digital camera in 2015. Very slowly at first, I became more adventurous with my digital work. I “discovered” the Orton Effect. See my post Terra Incognito. Then, I got the Nik Collection, and the rest is history.
The tool I use most is Color Efex Pro. The Graduated Neutral Density filter is a life saver. I have such a filter for the front of my lens, but it tends to add too much black to the upper portion of the picture. It was designed for film, for which it works very well. On digital, it doesn’t do so well. With the filter I can both darken the sky, and lighten the foreground. Some of the other tools are useful, like Detail Extractor (but, it has to be toned down), and split color filters.
On the above image, I used a Graduated Neutral Density filter on the sky, and then added a very light split color filter to add some yellow to the lighter clouds in the distance.
For this image, I used only a Graduated Neutral Density filter.
I have waxed poetically about this section of the Historic Columbia River Highway in the past. I intend to do so in the future. It’s one of my favorite places. It goes from Mosier, Oregon to The Dalles, and encompasses Oregon’s climate shift from wet to dry east of the Cascade Mountains.
For the above picture, I used a Graduated Neutral Density, and the Detail Extractor, which I had to use with a little more intensity than I normally do, otherwise the trees on the left would have been quite dark.
For this picture, I used a Graduated Neutral Density, and the Detail Extractor. I originally used the Detail Extractor on the whole picture, but the darkened foreground looked extremely unreal, so I used the brush tool to paint it onto the sky, and used spot healer in Photoshop to clean up the sharp edges.
A humorous note: a co-worker called his picture “Bacon Sunset.” I like that.
I’m still learning, so I may improve upon these pictures and others at a later date, but for now, I am learning the ropes, and experimenting to see what works.
–Gary L. Quay
