P&P Workflow: #3

by Jason D. Moore

Before: Taken in Grand Central Station, NYC 1/30/2007, 1:40 PM
Taken with available light, no flash.

• Nikon D50
  Auto Exposure Mode
  18.0-50.00 f/3.5-5.6 lens
  1/20 at f/3.5
  ISO 800
  Focal Length 18mm
  RAW

In Lightroom – Develop Module:

• Cropped and rotated so the line of lights at the far end of the room were level and along a third and the left edge of the large flag was along a third.
• Basic:
  Recovery: 32
  Blacks: 16
• Tone Curve:
  Highlights: 0
  Lights: +19
  Darks: -27
  Shadows: 0
• Color Adjustments:
  Hue:
  -Yellows: -7
  Saturation:
  -Reds: +100
  -Yellows: -40
  -Greens: 0
  -Cyans: +54
  -Blues: +13
  -Magentas: 0
• Detail:
  Sharpen, Smooth, De-noise = 100
• Lens Corrections:
  Vignetting Amount = -69

In Photoshop CS3 beta:

• Lab Sharpening
  -Duplicate background layer
  -Convert to Lab Color mode (Don’t flatten)
  -Select the “Lightness” channel
  -Apply an Unsharp Mask filter with the settings: Amount: 81%, Radius: 1.0px, Threshold: 0 levels
  -Convert back to RGB (Don’t flatten)
• Lower the opacity of this layer to 75% (to your taste) to help the sharpening blend more smoothly.

After:

*If you would like to contribute to the P&P Workflow, please email Jason.