Lightroom Split Toning and more.

How I made Freedom.

This image was captured as a silhouette, resting the camera on a container wall, with the Sony NEX-7 and the Sony 50 f/1.8.
It looked nice to me and decided not to crop anything, although the sun was rather centered, the bird was in the perfect position in relation to it and my silhouette base was balanced as shot. Sometimes it’s good to break the rules, just to keep a fresh perspective.

Image as shot. Sony Nex7- 5ony 50 f1.8 @ 1/2000, ISO 400

But it lacked punch, and I went to adventure land while still in Lightroom. I noticed the Split Toning module. Although this technique dates back to the film days and it consisted of tinting B&W images with the Highlights and Shadows in different tones, preferably contrasting colors, it was new territory to me. So I moved the saturation of the highlights with caution and got a beautiful purplish hue to the clouds. Ahhhhh, we were getting someplace. So I played with the shadows and the rest of the sliders, not crazy about the Hue, and went back to default on that.

So now I take the image to CS6 and decide to explore my beloved Nik Color Efex filters for an extra touch. Tinkerbelle must have thrown some of her magic dust on the screen of my computer and took me directly to Detail Extractor. Why not, let’s see what we get. Voila, I get detail in my solid black silhouette. Not enough to make it a distraction (I had to pull back a little after applied), but enough to give the image a new twist.

Finished product resized and sharpened for web.

Here is a 100% crop of the detail, no sharpening. I was amazed at how clean it looked, even after being pulled from total shadow. Sony sensors rock!

Detail of the extracted color. Unsharpened and no noise reduction applied after the process.

Final touch, get rid of the small bird on the left, which was bothering my slightly OC eyes, and it was done. Resize and sharpened for display with Nik sharpening plugin.

Happy New Year to all!!!!

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