Kealia Sunrise

[DanielLane]

Ok, here we go. my first "Before and After".

I had an awesome shoot this morning. I was up at 4am to get out to the beach and catch the sunrise. Clouds weren't cooperating to give a lot of sky color and texture, so I opted for more of a seascape instead. I got a ton of great shots, but here is one I thought I would share as a "Before and After".

BEFORE


AFTER

EXIF
Mode: Manual
ISO: 200
Speed: 1/400s
Aperture: f/4.8
Filter: Split ND .9

This one was a little difficult to get the sky not to be blown out and get some detail in the rocks at the same time. The Split ND helped tremendously! I could not have gotten this shot with out it. Since I got what I wanted in the rocks, and all the information I needed was in the rest of the shot and it wasn't totally blown out in the sky, I worked it up in Photoshop. Here is what I did.

Remember: A Wacom Tablet is your friend! (Intuos 4 Medium)

In Camera Raw
1. Generally, the first thing I do is basic adjustments on the Basic page just to get the process started.For this photo, the settings were:
Recovery: 50, Fill Light: 20, Brightness: Down to +35, Contrast: +65, Clarity: +30, Vibrance: +15, Saturation: +8
2. Then over to noise reduction. Set Luminance NR to 50, left Color NR at the default 25
3. Check the horizon for level. It was off about 2 degrees. Leveled and cropped.
4. Now here was the big part. The Adjustment brush. Did a few things here...
a. Adjust the contrast, clarity, saturation & contrast in the clouds
b. Dropped the exposure in the dark areas around some of the rocks.
c. Raised exposure, contrast, clarity, sharpness of the highlights on the rock. Also added a little of the sky color (orange) in for effect.
d. Upped exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity and sharpness of the crashing wave. Not much on any of it, just enough to get it to pop.
e. Did an overall contrast and saturation adjustment to the water (not the wave, just the background water). Again, not much, but a little helped.
f. Dropped the exposure as I upped the clarity and sharpness of the dark areas of the background waves.
5. Then used the graduated filter to drop the exposure a little, up the contrast and add a touch more clarity.

In Photoshop
1. Copy layer so I have two. On the base layer, add a Levels adjustment layer to get the sky tuned in right where I want to. On the second layer, added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to get the water and foreground exactly where I wanted it. Used the mask on the adjustment layer so I only really effected the rocks and the crashing wave.
2. Added layer mask to second layer and revealed the corrected sky.
3. Merged layers up for next step. Noise reduction. I had to do a little, but not too bad.
4. Duplicate layer, then on new top layer, did a High Pass Filter. Set it to 5. Set blend mode of layer to overlay.
5. Merged layers up again.
6. went around with the Spot Healing Brush Tool to clean up the little bits of light I didn't want in the lower rocks. I really wanted a high contrast in that foreground so Some of it had to go.
7. I could see the light rays into the sky, but thought they could be enhanced just a bit to make them really shine so... Duplicate layer.
8. On the new top layer I...
a. Made Black and White, adjusting reds and yellows down a bit to get good contrast.
b. With a large brush, painted black over entire image except around the light rays.
c. Added adjustment to enhance brightness and contrast. Make them rays pop!
d. Added Radial blur, set to zoom at level 100. Did that 4 times over.
e. Added Gaussian Blur set to 50 to soften up the edges of the new rays.
f. Set layer blend mode to screen, opacity to 30%
g. Added adjustment of Hue/Saturation. Clicked colorize and made the rays the same color as the light in the sun area.
h. Looked at it and decided to back it off a little more in some areas, so with a really soft brush at 25% opacity and 25% flow, painted black around in the rays to lessen the effects where I thought it was still just a bit much.
9. Merge layers up one last time.
10. Check it all over and look to see if sharpening was needed. It wasn't.
11. Added the watermark.

Well, there you have it. I hope someone out there likes this image and maybe someone will find all this information helpful. If not, it was an interesting thing to look at the entire process I went through for just one photo.

[swood]

Wow, great edit...I love the way you brought out the colours in the water. If I had a criticism, I would like to see another version without the vignette at the top...(I'm no professional, so it's just a gut feel)...
Thanks for the detailed instructions on the edit, I would love to do what you did, but find it difficult without the help you provided...
One question, how long did it take you?

[John Hendry]

Hi

Thanks for all the info great stuff.

all the best

[DanielLane]

I thought about removing that vignette around the top, but thought it would be a little difficult. I didn't add that, it appeared with the treatment across the sky. sigh...

Glad you liked the shot. It took me around an hour to 1.5 hours to do this shot. Not sure exactly. I was processing photos most of the day...

[kelleyrie]

I love the way it turned out, you took beautiful to extraordinary! And I too love my Wacom tablet!

[dj-dubai]

lovely nice work but i am so sorry but sill i like original one

[DanielLane]

The only thing about the original one, it's all washed out. The edited one is closer to what it actually looked like than the before image. Every time I was trying to capture that color range, I could get it in the sky, but when I did, the rocks were almost completely gone, and the wave had no detail at all. I had to compromise on the exposure in order to get something across the entire shot, then bring it all back in with photoshop.

[TNH]

Wow.. that is awesome!!!
Isn't it so cool how you can turn a kind of boring photo into an amazing one like that? You did an awesome job on this! Two thumbs up!

[jcspenny]

I like the original, but the edit is amazing! Thanks for sharing this. And I've got to agree with you, Wacom tablets are amazing. I love mine.

[troodles]

I love love love this!!! only one question what is a Wacom tablet? i wish i could do layers really need lessons LOL.