After posting my recent "Poetry of Autumnal Woods" series I received many questions about my post-processing approach. I need to explain and provide a few caveats.
Normally for post-processing, I would start exploring and fixing contrast, saturation, colors, and so forth. If I wanted a more "mystical" effect, I would go through adding a glow effect (various ways, and some tutorials online, especially in LAB mode), and enhancing "local contrast," also called tonal contrast (but I do that after the glow effects, then I reduce brightness, and continue tweaking until I got the effect I wanted. The end would see me adding saturation to selected areas, darkening corners, and brightening particular parts of the image, etc. It was time consuming. Fun, but it does take time. The local/tonal contrast enhancement I would do with the High Pass filter, and/or the USM filter.
However, lately I've been playing with Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 and these images have been the beneficiaries of it. It has saved me time, but it still is not a quick thing. Nothing here is just push a button and be done. I don't like to just apply a filter as is, so I tweak as much as possible until I find what I want. For the glow in these images I've been manipulating the "Midnight" filter, or the "Glamour Glow" filter. I tweak some things before going in, and often do some work on Camera RAW (or on Capture NX) before going in, then tweak the filter controls until I get to where I want. I then increase saturation locally in some images, or reduce it in others. After all those steps I apply the tonal contrast filter (although you can do this with the High Pass, or a combination of High Pass and USM), and might go back to soften, dodge, or burn, selected areas. It really depends on the image. What I look to do with images of dense forests and trees is create enough separation so that it creates the illusion of depth. Tonal contrast (whether with the filter or with the High Pass) is very helpful here.
Every image is different, so each takes careful contemplation and management. I'm certainly not always successful either "manually" or by using the Nik filters, but it is fun to play. Often I abandon the filters altogether and go back to curves, various layers, some exposure blending, gaussian blur, and various attempts at an Orton effect. But with these images I did not consciously seek to use the Orton Effect. I just think that the Nik Color Efex Pro's Midnight and Glamour Glow effects end up being, in essence, a pseudo-Orton.
Much of my effort at post-processing is stepping back from various brinks (overdone, overdone, etc.). I try to be as mindful in processing as I try to be when witnessing the original scene. I'm glad these came out in a way that connected with my experience of the moment. In fact, I am glad I could turn that one of the road. On that one (and on the Orchard shot) I forgot that the camera was set to ISO 2000 (I had been exploring high ISO the previous night).
So, that's it. Not a ton to it, just exploring and figuring out what works best for the kind of images I've been taking lately, and for the artistic vision I've been trying to firm up.
Thanks for looking and for your thoughts,
N
