Reliving a close encounter with a hippo
Some sudden hippo action caught reader Grace Waite by surprise on a recent safari holiday, so she sent us the raw file for rescuing.
Working in Adobe Camera Raw, we’re going to start off in the Geometry Panel 1 to improve the composition. Let’s fix that wonky angle out by using the rotate slider, then scale in a bit to make the composition better while automatically interpolating the file (increasing the size of the pixels).
In the Basic panel 2 , let’s darken the image to give it greater contrast: the Exposure slider will rescue the overexposure at -50 and the Highlights slider pushed up to + 15 will keep the whites clean.
Now let’s drop a small, narrow Radial Mask over the hippo 3 and invert it. In Masking we can select a Radial Gradient to create a slim, lozenge-shaped mask over the hippopotamus. Make the feather value about 60 then Invert the selection before taking the Blacks slider to -35 and the Dehaze slider to +10 so that the areas surrounding the hippos darkens even more.
Finally, it would be good to draw more attention to the main subject of the image in its pool of light 4 . So let’s go back to the Basic panel , where we can use the White Balance slider to warm the shot up a bit more.