Vancouver summers are far too short, and being that I’m the sort that likes to live in denial for as long as possible, I thought I’d try to see if I could turn a fall photo into a summer one:
When I do these kinds of post-processing tricks I don’t really have a special method or technique in mind. I’m a fiddler: I push and pull levers until I see what I like, and undo anything I don’t, but here’s a basic outline of what I did and when:
Changed the color temperature from the default to a cool, almost tungsten-blue hue.- Brought down the exposure to make the shot a bit darker.
- Recovered some detail in the clouds by adjusting the recovery slider.
- Added some fill light to brighten the photo.
- Increased the blacks and contrast.
- Pushed the exposure back to the right to lighten the photo which had gone quite dark at this point.
- Desaturated the colors but increased the vibrance - I wanted the tones to be strong, but not overwhelming.
- Used the clarity slider - I’m still not sure what this does, but it makes photos “pop” for lack of a better word.
- Using the tone curve, I created a strong contrast curve with bright highlights and deep shadows.
- Shifted the shadow tones toward yellow until the leaves started to look green.
- Increased the saturation of the green shadows until the leaves looked closer to an early summer tone.
- Shifted the camera calibration green primary toward a lighter green while increasing the saturation slightly.
- Adjusted the tint to make the green tones even richer.
- Shifted the blue/yellow chromatic aberration slider to try to downlplay some of the blue fringing around the leaves.
- Added a bit more fill light.
And here we have it - instant summer in the middle of a cold and rainy fall.
