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Old 06-19-2007, 03:59 PM
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ELAY ELAY is offline
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: Ottawa, ON
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I defer to those who went before on the use of filters...but if you want to/have to give it a go in post-processing, here are a few things to try:

1. Judicious increases in global contrast and saturation can help.

2. Local contrast enhancement helps too -- there are a few ways to do it, but the easiest is to use unsharp mask (lots of tutorials out there -- here's one).

3. If your software supports layers and blending modes, then doing a duplicate layer and blending down on multiply can work wonders -- you can use the opacity slider to fine tune the effect. There is a variation on this, which some people call the Orton Effect, which involves blurring your duplicate layer a bit first, thereby creating a bit of a glow around your subject).

4. If your software supports decomposing into LAB space, then you can try this trick, which I find works really well. Don't worry, you don't actually have to understand what LAB space is to make it work. .

5. You can also use the Channel Mixer, like so.

You can also tweak the individual channels in levels and curves, but I have not had a lot of success with those approaches -- requires too much skill maybe. Here's a tutorial from a photographer who seems to have mastered this technique.

Good luck,

EL

Last edited by ELAY; 06-19-2007 at 04:07 PM.
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