Edit your shots

Use software to transform your images into something special

“Post-processing can be used to add a unique personal touch”

After the image-taking stage, post-processing can be used to add atmosphere, creativity and a unique personal touch. You might want to start in Adobe Camera RAW, upping the contrast and vibrancy levels of bold flowers, or even decreasing the saturation levels to suit subtle pastel subjects. Try to consider the character of your flower as you edit.

Once basic adjustments have been made, there’s room to get more imaginative. “Crossprocessing, vintage-type effects, and artistic distortion are all interesting places to start the next layer of the creative process,” says Jocelyn Horsfall. “I have experimented with adding painterly effects using textures in software like Topaz and Nik.”

If you’re interested in adding textures, it’ll come as no surprise that the internet is the best place to find libraries of texture files. Once you’ve found a pleasing option, you simply need to place the texture above your flower image as a layer in a layer stack. If you’re working in Photoshop, you can experiment with the blending mode and opacity of both layers to create a final shot that you’re happy with.

As well as adding layers and textured effects, we’ve mentioned that tweaks to the exposure and colours can be just as impactful. Below, we’ll cover the ways to convert our earlier image to monochrome in Camera RAW and the Silver Efex Pro plug-in.

1

BASIC TWEAKS Start by opening up your image in Camera RAW. First, correct any image distortion in the Lens Correction tab by ticking Enable Lens Profile Correction and selecting the right lens. Or, manually tweak the perspective and vignette.

2

CHOOSE YOUR SOFTWARE You might want to make basic tweaks to the exposure in Camera RAW, or switch to another piece of software. We opened the shot in Silver Efex Pro 2 here, a plug-in that converts colour photos to black and white.

3

START WITH PRESETS If editing your image to black and white completely manually seems daunting, try applying one of the editing options from the preset library. Each will emphasise textures and tones in different ways, to suit different images.

4

EDIT FROM SCRATCH For greater creative control, edit the image completely yourself. Silver Efex Pro 2 applies a ‘neutral’ preset when you open up your image for the first time. You can then change the parameters on the right of the image.

5

BRIGHTNESS AND CONTRAST It’s best to start off in the Global Adjustments panel. We took up the Brightness by 15% and the Midtones by 50%, as the shot was fairly dark. It’s easy to make changes and preview the effect as you edit.

6

CHANGE THE STRUCTURE Go to the Structure menu in the Global Adjustments panel, and tweak the level of clarity in the highlights, midtones and shadows of your shot to suit. To edit the Clarity of the whole image uniformly, drag the Structure slider left and right.

7

PROTECT TONES It’s possible to unintentionally lose detail in the highlights and shadows if you get carried away with the Contrast sliders. If needed, you can use the two Tonality Protection sliders to bring back detail in clipped areas.

8

THE FINAL TOUCHES From the Finishing Adjustments drop-down menu, experiment with adding borders and toning effects to the image. We opted for a subtle but warm sepia tone with this flower, and also burned the edges.