Shoreham Power Station - Before and After Photoshop

I have revised our policy on post production touching up of photographs (for want of a more appropriate metaphor). I used to think that it was prudent not to touch up photos post production and that the art of being a good photographer boiled down to getting the camera to see what I was seeing to some extent and being able to record that with beauty and posterity. However with the onset of the digital camera phenomenon, most images can be changed and completely different photographs of the same scene can be taken with only the simple press of a button to change a setting on your camera. It is also true these days that on many digital cameras images can be edited and touched up on the camera before you even download them to the computer.

So in the interests of transparency and producing outstanding images from digital photographs that might otherwise have been disregarded to the recycle bin, Inner Vision Photography will now be experimenting with post production image remastering (in other words playing around with Photoshop or Lightroom when circumstances deem necessary).

Below is an example of one of my first attempts to enhance a photograph taken on Sussex South Downs with the Nikon CoolPix P510. The "Baby Nikon" as it became affectionately known, has a really high magnification zoom lens and is extremely versatile in all kinds of lighting conditions, most notably low light.

Baby Nikon

The image below was enhanced by increasing the contrast and turning up the hue by a small amount. I brought out the colours in the clouds by selecting an area above the field and adjusting that separately. If you zoom in on the image you can see where I had to smooth the edge of the field which was done with a healing brush tool / eraser and by feathering the edge of the selected area. This made the overall photo look more colourful and dramatic. If I wanted to make it look professional I would probably select the area above the horizon to work with and spend more time on it, but for a quick job I am quite pleased with the result.

Copyrights © Matt Blythe 2014.