James Abbott
You really can’t beat a killer sunrise or sunset when it comes to landscape photography, but shooting successful landscapes in the middle of the day is perfectly possible too. At this time, the best results come on days where there’s plenty of cloud in the sky – ideally with fragments of blue, which is exactly what this image has.
The hard light and all the texture present in the scene make the image an ideal candidate for a harsh and moody mono conversion.
WHAT I WANT TO CHANGE :
1. Basic processing
2. Custom mono conversion
3. Boost detail
4. Add a controlled vignette
Basic processing 1
To get started, we’re going to process the image before a custom mono conversion, to get the best black-and-white image possible. The first thing to is to click on the Tone Curve tab and select Strong Contrast from the dropdown menu, before heading back to the Basic tab. Here I reduced Exposure to -0.30 to darken the image slightly before reducing Highlights to -100 and setting Shadows to +25 to recover detail. The white point was then set to +53, while holding down the Alt key to see any highlight clipping, and then Blacks were set to -13.
Custom mono conversion 2
At the top of the Basic tab, the Treatment needs to be set to Black & White before clicking on the Black & White Mix tab: here there are eight sliders that allow you to control how individual colours convert to greyscale. Yellows were reduced to -20, alongside Greens to -35 to darken the bright grass. Oranges were set to +30, as this brightened the wall, while Blues were reduced to -20 to darken the sky. Aquas were set to -65 to darken a light patch in the sky. Always take care when using Blues: this channel can introduce noise if applied too strongly.
3 Boost detail
With the overall conversion looking good, it’s time to move onto highlighting detail, so it’s back to the Basic tab to see how the Clarity and Dehaze sliders affect the image. Using Clarity first, I increased the amount to 30 to boost midtone contrast and bring out the texture in the scene. I could have pushed it further with this image, but I prefer a strong yet refined effect. For Dehaze, there is a small amount of haze in the midground of the scene; moving the slider to the right, +10 was perfect.
4 Add a controlled vignette
To complete the processing, I wanted to add a vignette using the Radial Filter. This is my preferred method of adding a vignette because you can easily control the size and shape of the effect, as well as applying much more than just brightness control. With the tool active, I simply clicked and dragged to create an ellipse so the wall and hills remained largely unaffected. Feathering was left at 50% and Exposure was set to -35, so the effect was subtle. To position the filter, I turned on the mask to see exactly which parts of the image were affected.