I often exhort my students to play in Photoshop to learn how to make stronger images. I’m not a ‘Do as I say, not as I do kinda guy,’ so here is the result of my processing an image multiple times to art up a file.
Original capture
Here is a dragonfly from the wetlands of Sedona, AZ from last summer. Revisiting files that you captured in the past is good practice. Solid images start with a good capture. Away we go.
This image above is from a RAW file with no adjustment. Captured with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III and 40-150mm f/2.8 M.Zukio lens, with Olympus M-20 2X Teleconverter on a Fotopro Eagle E-6L tripod.
This is my go-to tripod for nature and wildlife. It has a built in gimbal. Fotopro liked my work well enough that I became an ambassador. That’s a bonus for you if you go through me to purchase I can get you a good discount deal. Send me an email [email protected] for more info.
Photoshop process
I wanted more detail in the dragonfly. When I processed for sharpness, it made other parts too crunchy and a second time for softness and color. I layered the sharp image on top the softer and changed the Blend Mode to Soft Light. It gave me the detail I wanted for the dragonfly but not for the rest of the image.
Using the Select Subject feature in Photoshop, I made a selection around the dragonfly. With a little additional cleanup adding and subtracting missed bits, the selection was completed. The creature was extracted on to its own layer. The sharp processed layer was turned off allowing the color processed layer to show through.
Luminar plugin
The layers were combined and the Luminar 4 plugin was used to enhance the final image.
You can see some of my dragonfly art with textures and Blend Modes using Photoshop processing in this Xpozer article.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob