I was organizing some old photos this morning, and recalling a digital processing technique detailed by Rick Sammon in his book HDR Photography Secrets for Digital Photographers.
The secret in question is processing a drab photo using Photomatix and Photoshop and Topaz Adjust (Spicify!) to increase color, contrast, and general interestingness. And I gotta say, I’m pretty sold on the results. I won’t detail every minute step here, but compare the photo above with the original unprocessed image below, and I think you’ll notice a difference. Note that I did shoot the original in RAW, so there was more info to work with, but such processing can even improve JPG images. And I’ll admit that I didn’t spend a lot of time on this image and am not completely satisfied (halo, chromatic abberation), but I wanted to show the dramatic difference possible with a few simple tools.
Makes me wonder what other diamonds in the rough are in my hard drive, just waiting for a nice polishing…
