EDIT THE SHOT

1 CURVES FOR CONTRAST We wanted to create a washed out, dreamy look. To achieve this, in your RAW editor, pull the bottom of the Tone Curve upwards, then add a point a quarter of the way up the line and drag it to the centre.

2 COLOUR GRADING In Curves, go to the Blue Channel and drag the top of the curve down, to add yellow highlights. Drag the line up around half way down to restore shadow neutrality. Apply the inverse to the Green Channel.

3 LOCAL ADJUSTMENTS With colour set, use your RAW editor’s selective adjustment tools to add local clarity, drawing out details like the coffee glass and cream. We merged frames with varying lighting and prop placement.

4 CONTROL THE EDGES While the bright, airy lighting is attractive we need to focus attention on the subject a little. We simply added a subtle vignette in Photoshop, using the Camera Raw filter. In the Effects Panel, drag the slider to the left to slightly darken the frame edges.

5 COSMETIC ADJUSTMENTS After some dust removal and other basic retouches, we decided to adjust the shape of the cream topping. We selected this and put it on a new layer, then used Puppet Warp to improve the symmetry. Add pins to control which parts of the layer are transformed.

6 ADD FLARE EFFECTS We’re going to introduce the flare bokeh we created earlier. We shot multiple versions, so picked our favourites then dragged the files onto our document. Since they were shot against a black background, we can simply use the Screen Blend Mode to composite these in.

Right bottom COSY AUTUMN THEME By adding a warm tone to the highlights, the lighting looks more natural. We also shot multiple frames with objects in different places, which we combined for the optimal layout 4

Right top OUT-OF-CAMERA The RAW file is a little on the cool side to convey the sunrise effect. While very few highlights are burned out they are distractingly bright, which needs fixing 1

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BEFORE

AFTER