Windsor Castle, UK

[Rufus]

Windsor Castle has been in the news recently for a couple of notable weddings. It is one of the Royal residences and has a 1,000 year history as a castle and palace. It is said that the Queen prefers Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace.

This a view of the state apartments and upper ward on the eastern side of the castle. There was very little choice of viewpoint as it was taken through locked gates! There is not much foreground in the image as there was a wide gravel path in the foreground which I have cropped away; it just added an irrelevant stripe across the bottom of the image.

I have been practising post processing with this image so I would welcome any comments whether about the composition or the processing.



And here is the SOOC shot:

[Shadowman]

Nicely processed, great treatment to the sky.

[Rufus]

Thank you John. I did spemd a long time on the sky, mainly because I discovered rather late in the process that my selection of it was not very good and could not find a way to extend the selection in PS once it had been acted upon and deselected . I have learnt the hard way that I should save my selections if they will take a while to reproduce or amend

[Geoff F]

The colour version nicely brings out the stonework colour but with that sky I can see why you went to a B&W alternative.

I wonder if you could get away with adding just a fraction more highlight brightness to the B&W in order to stretch the contrast a tad more, but mask out that already bright area in the top right corner ?

[Manfred M]

The B&W version definitely works better for me than the coloured version.

That being said, I think evening out the tonal variations through dodging and burning would have a positive impact on the overall image.

[Rufus]

The B&W version definitely works better for me than the coloured version.

That being said, I think evening out the tonal variations through dodging and burning would have a positive impact on the overall image.

Oh dear, I had tried to put into practice some feedback from my local club on images like this which they had said should have a full range of tones (although I did not do that using dodge and burn). But wow, your revisions are a great improvement. Thank you for taking the time to illustrate what you mean as it really helped.

You have inspired me to experiment wth the dodge and burn tools using this image. I have done so briefly this evening on a trial and error basis, but next I want do this in a more sytematic way to see the effect of adjusting the shadows, midtones and highlights with either brush. I will try with an exposure of 10-15% as this seems to give a visible difference on a single pass of the brush without being over-dramatic.

[Manfred M]

Oh dear, I had tried to put into practice some feedback from my local club on images like this which they had said should have a full range of tones (although I did not do that using dodge and burn). But wow, your revisions are a great improvement. Thank you for taking the time to illustrate what you mean as it really helped.

You have inspired me to experiment wth the dodge and burn tools using this image. I have done so briefly this evening on a trial and error basis, but next I want do this in a more sytematic way to see the effect of adjusting the shadows, midtones and highlights with either brush. I will try with an exposure of 10-15% as this seems to give a visible difference on a single pass of the brush without being over-dramatic.

I don't use the dodge and burn tools at all, but rather use a curves adjustment layer + layer mask when I do these operations. They are non-destructive and I can tweak the mask to get the effect that I am after. In fact I use multiple different ones for various parts of the image.

A couple of highly regarded photographers once told me that the difference between a good image and a great image are local adjustments.

[Rufus]

The colour version nicely brings out the stonework colour but with that sky I can see why you went to a B&W alternative.

I wonder if you could get away with adding just a fraction more highlight brightness to the B&W in order to stretch the contrast a tad more, but mask out that already bright area in the top right corner ?

Thank you for commenting, Geoff. Perhaps the dodging and burning that Manfred suggested will achieve this, and could be applied to areas of the sky as well. I will certainly consider that when I have experimented with the dodge and burn tools and better understand their effects. Dodge and burn has become a mantra of my local club over the last couple of years but, unsurprisingly, I have not had any success with my limited trial and error approach.

I have discovered the dehaze tool in LR which does a remarkable job on skies It does require a very light touch though.

[Rufus]

I don't use the dodge and burn tools at all, but rather use a curves adjustment layer + layer mask when I do these operations. They are non-destructive and I can tweak the mask to get the effect that I am after. In fact I use multiple different ones for various parts of the image.

Well I am more comfortable with the curves tool, but I am still trying to master masks. That is a work in progress and another story, but I will get there.

If dodge and burn was performed on seperate layers, would that not be non-destructive?

[Manfred M]

Well I am more comfortable with the curves tool, but I am still trying to master masks. That is a work in progress and another story, but I will get there.

If dodge and burn was performed on seperate layers, would that not be non-destructive?

If that is what you are comfortable with, then practice your skills there. The downside of your approach is you very large files as each new copy of the underlying image file increases the overall file size. The upside of using layers and layer masks is that not only is file size not increased very much, but the approach is much more flexible (can undo by changing the brush from black to white or vice-versa) and other tools, including blur tools (Guassian Blur) can be applied to it.

Dodging and burning are techniques that have been around for a very long time; the terms come from the B&W wet darkroom, where using dodging and burning was a very common practice. If you look at any of Ansel Adams work, he was an absolute master of these techniques, so it has been the mantra of serious photographers for the past century or so...