Warrior 2 James Abbott

This landscape image is all about symmetry and the near‑perfect reflection in the water, so I wanted to process the shot in a way that accentuated this. The reflection of the sky in the water had been rendered beautifully, but the sky itself lacked punch and needed some strong processing. Doing so in colour didn’t work – but by converting to mono, I was able to apply much more dramatic processing that created balance in the symmetry.

Convert to Black & White

Adobe Camera Raw and

Lightroom are the best places to convert a raw file to mono because you’re working on the raw image data for a cleaner result than converting later in

Photoshop. Also, you get full control of eight colour channels and how these colours convert to mono.

I wanted to darken the dry grass, which was possible using the Oranges channel; then lighten the yellow flowers and some of the green grass visible in the image using Yellows. Finally, I reduced the amount for Blues to darken the sky slightly. Care must be taken when darkening Blues, because this is the noisiest colour channel.

Range Mask with localised adjustments

When applying localised adjustments in ACR and Lightroom, you can bring up a mask to clearly see where adjustments will be applied. A new feature in CC 2018 for the localised adjustment tools is Range Mask, which allows you to target either specific colours or levels of luminosity when applying an adjustment.

I used this feature to target the sky when using the Graduated Filter, and the mountain in the background when using the Adjustment Brush after. The Range Mask saves so much time and allows you to make much more precise adjustments than before.

ACR Tone Curve

Curves have long been a highly regarded adjustment control in Photoshop, but they also exist in ACR and Lightroom for use on raw files. Curves are a powerful way of adding contrast, controlling brightness and applying colour correction and effects to images.

While the Tone Curve isn’t quite as fully featured as Curves, it remains a much more reliable way of adding contrast either manually or using the presets, than by using the Contrast slider in the Basic tab. The downside, however, is that you’re limited to a single Tone Curve, so you can’t stack effects as you would with Adjustment Layers in Photoshop.