Making "Heart of the Canyon"

Heart of the Canyon

I recently shared this photograph of Antelope Canyon that I took last May while my wife and I were traveling around Utah and Arizona.


I wanted to share how I edited this photograph. So here it goes...

Editing Process

1. Compare Adobe Camera Raw vs. Use Raw Photo Processor
2. Process RAW to obtain the overall colors and exposure I'm looking for
3. Edit in Photoshop

1. ACR vs. RPP

I like to use both Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Raw Photo Processor (RPP). If you are not familiar with RPP, you should spend some time after reading this and check it out. Its an excellent tool that I think sometimes gives you better colors than ACR. 

So I will load the RAW file into both ACR and RPP and compare what each of the two tools comes up with after fiddling with each a bit. What I'm looking for is which tool is going to "work for me" creatively. Sometimes the colors are too "off" in ACR. Sometimes the highlights or shadows are not working for me in RPP. Sometimes the underlying curve and exposure automatically applied to the RAW file doesn't work for me in one or the other tool. I try not to spend too much time fiddling here and I make a decision fairly quickly on which one I'll use. Once I chose which tool to use, then I'll close the other and start processing the RAW file for preparation of my final edits in Photoshop.

ACR - defaults

RPP - defaults

To the right is what the image looks like when opening in ACR with my defaults. As you can see, I start with everything zeroed out pretty much. However, all RAW processors apply some type of exposure and curve/tonal adjustments and there's also the question of color profile and how the colors are interpreted. I wasn't too happy with the way things looked in ACR and I know from experience that when this happens, I'm going to have a tough time usually getting ACR to come up with something I like.


So let's take a look at what the image looks like in RPP. To the right is how RPP presents the image, again with my defaults in place, which like ACR, are pretty much zeroed out. My first reaction was that this is probably going to be from where I want to start. The colors are not as wild and the overall tone is more subtle and possibly closer to what it was like when I was photographing this scene. The decision is made and I'm going to work with RPP for this image.

2. Process RAW in RPP

RPP - final

The first things I correct are both the overall exposure and the colors. I work with both at the same time because as you increase or decrease the exposure, the colors will change and either become more or less saturated. I'll try to fix and clipping during this step. In this case I did use the Highlight Recovery feature in RPP and compressed the highlights where the sunlight was peaking through the canyon walls.

I did bump the exposure up about 1 stop in RPP. You should not that even with a 1-stop exposure increase, the RPP image on my screen is still underexposed compared to the ACR default settings. RAW processors are not all equal and here is one place where you can see a difference immediately.

I adjusted the colors in RPP and brought them to a place that I liked. In RPP, you have access to individual multipliers of the Red, Green, and Blue channels. There are presets under the White Balance drop down with values such as 4000k, 5000k, 6250k, etc. I usually choose one of these and then sometimes make small incremental changes to the individual channel multipliers as I see fit. In this case, I first picked a temperature of 5560k and then bumped up the Red channel multiplier by .01 by entering into the field and hitting the UP arrow twice. Pressing the UP arrow once adds .005. This is how RPP allows you to fiddle with many of the values. I find this way more precise than moving sliders.

The only other edits I made in RPP were to add some Local Contrast (10), a little bit of Saturation (10), and made a very small Black Point adjustment (0.20) which is sort of like raising the shadows or shadow recovery in ACR. 

And that's it. Now I have prepared my image for its final editing that will be done in Photoshop.

3. Edit in Photoshop

Photoshop - Final edits

There are a few key goals that I have when working with an image in Photoshop. They are:

1. Color
2. Contrast
3. Creativity

3.1 Color

I try to arrive at the colors I want when processing the RAW file before I get to the Photoshop step. However, some tweaking is usually needed during this step in Photoshop because as I apply other changes to the image, the colors may be affected. When this is the case, I'll generally add or subtract saturation globally using a Vibrance adjustment layer. If there are colors casts or color corrections I think that are needed, I'll use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and adjust individual color channels as needed. I'm usually never happy with the way greens come out of the camera so I will make those adjustments during this step in Photoshop and now when processing the RAW file earlier.

In this case, I ended up desaturating the image because the colors were still just a little too "wild" and saturated for me for this image. I did this with a Vibrance adjustment layer. I made Saturation a -9 and Vibrance a +40. When I desaturated the whole image, the less saturated colors were too washed out and thus I attempted to bring them back up by adding a lot of Vibrance. 

3.2 Contrast

I apply contrast to the image using Luminosity Masks and Curve adjustment layers put together by Tony Kuyper. Tony has a panel extension for Photoshop called TK-ACTIONS Panel. Using Luminosity Masks with Curve adjustment layers lets you target specified tonal ranges of your image and apply contrast to them individually, rather than globally to the whole image. I love using these and Tony's panel extension in Photoshop make these a breeze to use.

For this image, I used two Luminosity Mask - Curve adjustment layers; an Ultra Mid-tones one and an Ultra Darks one. In both adjustment layers I applied a simple S-Curve to add some contrast to just those tonal ranges within the image.

3.3 Creativity

Layers

The last thing is a bucket I call creativity and its anything else I want to do to the image that will complete my creative vision. Those things often include:

• Dodging and Burning
• Shadow/Highlights
• Vignetting
• Levels and Exposure

I made a small Exposure adjustment after adding the contrast layers. I found things getting a little too "dark" so a +.60 to the Exposure got me back to where I wanted things.

I added a 50% gray layer with a Soft Light Blending Mode and then used the Dodge and Burn tools to draw attention and focus to some of the areas of the photograph where the light was "kissing" the walls of the canyon.

The last thing I did was use the Shadow/Highlights tool to tweak with the highlights and actually reduce them a bit which consequently allowed more color in those highlighted areas to shine through. To do this, I made a composite of all visible layers using the shift-command-option-E keyboard shortcut in Photoshop. I then made my edits in the Shadow/Highlights tool. Finally I moved this layer down lower on the stack before the other layers simply because I liked the look and effect of it there, rather than on top.

Now one thing I neglected to do with the Shadow/Highlights adjustment layer is make it a Smart Object so I can go back and fiddle with the adjustments as needed. I'm so used to working with smart or non-destructive tools adjustment layers that I forgot to use the Smart Object feature.

The End

So that's it! That's my process for editing this image and that's my basic process for editing any image now. I hope maybe you learned something new and I hope to remember to use Smart Objects when needed!