Rummaging around in old photos (2003!) I came across this image of a painted/rusted chain on a fishing boat in Oregon. I loved this subject matter then, love it now 13 years later.
The camera was my very first DSLR, a Canon EOS D60, which had, I believe, a 6mp sensor.
I was shooting JPEGs, knowing nothing about shooting RAW. Think I'd had the camera maybe two weeks.
But I did use Photoshop (sort of), and so did some post-processing, as you can see in the first photo.
Times have changed and so has my skill level (sort of). And you can see the difference in the second photograph.
So what did I do in the second picture? I used Curves to create a bit of depth. I used the Clarity slider to add a bit more texture to the rust. I darkened the image, added a layer mask, inverted it, and then used a soft brush to reveal the darker area in the lower two thirds of the frame. I used Photoshop's saturation "sponge" to pump up the blue paint on the metal a bit. And then I used some software I bought yesterday -- Aurora 2017 -- to add a bit more grunge and brightness to the image.
The result is a picture where the colors are richer, where there's more depth, and where the blue paint really stands out better against the complementary rusty orange colors.
Not bad for a photograph that began its life as a 3mb JPEG.
©Carol Leigh
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