Tree during snowdrop season

[Rufus]

I decided this was the image with most potential from my first photographic outing this year. For me the subject is the tree, and the snowdrops are of incidental interest. I therefore decided to retain some background on the right of the frame rather than crop anything from the main tree trunk. I have cropped away some sky and branches and extraneous stuff from elsewhere.

I have processed it with global adjustments in Lightroom, and some localised cleaning up in Photoshop. I then made a selection of the main tree and applied a curves adjustment to increase the contrast. I have not yet carried out other more localised adjustments.

Do you think this a suitable starting place, and what should should my next steps be? I feel the image might benefit from some dodging and burning to the tree. If so, would that mean lightening the lighter areas and darkening the darker areas to increase the contrast in the bark? Or should I start by bringing out some detail in the shadows?



Here is the SOOC image:

[Geoff F]

I am tempted to either crop a little closer at the top to concentrate more on the trunk bark and snowdrops or alternatively reduce the snowdrops by about a half? At the moment I seem to be split between two subjects.

Your edit looks OK to me.

[Round Tuit]

I am tempted to either crop a little closer at the top to concentrate more on the trunk bark and snowdrops or alternatively reduce the snowdrops by about a half? At the moment I seem to be split between two subjects.

Your edit looks OK to me.

I don't know for sure what you were trying to accomplish but I suspect that you were trying to darken your original shot. If that is the case, you are using the wrong approach. Duplicating the layer and changing the blending mode to multiply does add density and darkens but it also messes up the saturation and white balance. It worked quite well for the sky but not for the rest of the shot. I would suggest restricting the multiply to the sky with an appropriate mask and using a curve layer in luminosity mode to darken and add contrast. This would give you a better base for further localized dodging and burning. Others are better qualified than me to suggest where to dodge and where to burn.

Here is a quick example:

[Rufus]

I am tempted to either crop a little closer at the top to concentrate more on the trunk bark and snowdrops

Thank you Geoff. If croppng "a little closer at the top" means excluding most of sky, it could become a 5x4. Here are a couple of crops.



A closer crop makes the tree resemble a gloved hand!

[Rufus]

...Duplicating the layer and changing the blending mode to multiply does add density and darkens but it also messes up the saturation and white balance. It worked quite well for the sky but not for the rest of the shot. I would suggest restricting the multiply to the sky with an appropriate mask and using a curve layer in luminosity mode to darken and add contrast. This would give you a better base for further localized dodging and burning. Others are better qualified than me to suggest where to dodge and where to burn.

Thank you Andre, those are interesting observations, particularly on the effect of the Multiply blend mode on white balance. So far, all layers have the Normal blend mode applied rather than Multiply.

I was aiming to darken the tree a little and increase the contrast and was happy to obtain a warmer appearance. I cannot recall whether I changed the white balance in my editing or it was a byproduct of my other edits.

I shall have a look at the effect created by using luminosity in the way you have mentioned.

[Rufus]

I was not looking to darken the shot as much as Andre's example. I have found that a little less opacity and/or flow on the curves layer reduces the warmth tones of the tree, even though the curves adjustment was to the RGB values and not limited to a single channel.

[Geoff F]

There are many options with this scene, David. None of them are in the 'You should do it this way' situation, so just experiment until you find something which suits you. Possibly you will end up with more than one keepable image from your original.

[Round Tuit]

+1 to Geoff's comment. It is your photo, Make it look the way you like.