One of my favorite things to photograph is sunlight coming through plants that are semi translucent, that glow in the sun. Sometimes though it needs a little help really 'popping' out from the rest of the scene.
Here is how I try to enhance it. Wondering how everyone else does it.
Straight OOC
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Crop to 8x10 format since that format works better for this picture. Recover Highlights, Black point from 3 to 1 to open up the shadow areas
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Adjust levels by channel to color correct, bring out saturation, and pull the shadows back in by channel so to make sure dark tones don't have a color cast.
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Now it starts to get a little taste-dependent. Opened up in Nik Viveza and lightened the tree, added some structure and contrast, added more red to the bottome left area of the sky, and more blue to the upper right, to exaggerate the banding of colors from the sunset, which also gives some cooler hues for the foliage to stand out against.
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Lastly, added a polarizing filter using Color Efx Pro to really deepen the blues (making it easier to select just the color range in the leaves without spillover into the sky). After that I re-opened in Viveza, selected the color ranges in the leaves, and added warming, brightness, contrast for a brilliance effect. This is the "final" image.
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Now the subject of this picture isn't anything special, I took the picture specifically for this little step by step. What do you all do for enhancing sunlight coming through foliage, any differences for fall/spring?
