Photo Fix Friday
Well I guess I can officially call this Photo Fix Friday concept a blog series now that I have reached three posts! I was looking through my old Disney images when I ran across this colorful image of the Pop Century resort. I remember this trip back in May of 2012. It was my first solo Disney trip as well as my first with a DSLR after almost a year of learning about photography with my old point & shoot.
What strikes about the original image is the color tone. I had the image way too warm (for my tastes and my memory of that evening). The beautiful darkening blue sky was the perfect backdrop for the colors of this section of the resort. I also had the image too dark and lost some of the details. Although I had been processing my images for quite a few months I was still learning about a good balance between the highlights and the shadows. I am sure I relied too heavily on the Topaz Labs’ Adjust plug-in to achieve my images.
For this photo fix I chose to start by changing the crop. I is a subtle change but I think it gives the Rubix Cube stairwell a little more room to breath in the image. The second change is the white balance. The original was at 5000K which although is not too far to the warm side of the scale is adding a lot of oranges and yellows to the image. The new image has a temp at 3500K. This brought the sky back to the color I remember and gave the buildings a nicer look, not like the sun was still shining on them.
For the second image I definitely adjusted the exposure more than I did originally. I increased the overall exposure by 2/3rds of a stop to bring up the background details and brighten the colors on the cube. I adjusted the highlights down and further brought attention to the rest of the scene by increasing the shadows. These changes give the image a definite boost toward the cheerful side rather than the darker, slightly intimidating original image.
The last changes I did to this image would be the final processing steps. Rather than go through Topaz Labs, I used the OnOne Perfect Effects 9.5. The ability to layer in multiple enhancements like increasing the contrast, increasing the dynamic range and adding a slight vignette all from within one application is very beneficial. If the changes I see in my head are more creative than these minor tweaks then I would have used Photoshop and spent a little more time processing.
Overall I like the changes I was able to achieve. I know my early processing was a little dark and tended to be warm in tone overall. Let me know what you think of these changes….
Pop Goes the Night
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/5s, 17mm, f/5.6, ISO 800
Pop Goes the Night Two
Nikon D5100, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4, 1/5s, 17mm, f/5.6, ISO 800
MLCreations Photography 