Favorite Processing Technique

[Karl Johnston]

What're your favorite processing techniques?

I like traditional dodge and burn, occasionally in certain circumstances I like to use a soft focus technique or a gaussin blur overlay to bring out soft light.

I'd like to devote this thread to sharing processing techniques for landscape; see what other people come up with.

Lets get some pictures rolling too, if possible.

[tonydee]

Nothing fancy, but what I find most commonly useful for both subtle and dramatic changes...

Shadow/mid/highlight brightness sliders - with feathered selections, ~20 layer blending modes, and variable opacity - can do _so_ much so easily and quickly. In LightZone's non-destructive work flow, it's the backbone of my post-processing. And easy:

one click to add an "relight" action
another click to use the selection tool (if necessary)...
an optional click to toggle between curves and straight lines
clicks around the area with a double-click to finish
an optional click to drag the feathered edge region in or out
go for it with the shadow/mid/highlight and opacity sliders
optional drop-down list for different blending modes (overlay, difference, negative etc)


5 seconds + however long to judge & compare results. Then the action dialog is listed there for tweaking at any time later during processing.

Cheers, Tony