Exercise 14: Interpretive Processing

The purpose of this exercise was to look creatively at an image and to consider different interpretations using the controls available in the chosen processing software. 

I chose as my image a close-up of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao for a number of reasons. Obviously it is a great shape but the texture of the titanium plates is amazing and the inter-weaving of the various shapes comprising the building provide for numerous shadows and reflections.

The 'normal' image is shown here and gives a good impression of the design concept. However, I felt that the image could be made more dramatic so I searched through the Lightroom presets to assess the various effects available.

There were various effects which increased the contrast or made the image look cooler but I wanted something to enhance the colour of the titanium tiles. The preset 'Colour Creative - Yesteryear 1' did the trick and the result is shown below. It also makes the sky more dramatic.

Finally, I thought that the shapes and shadows would be appropriate for a black and white conversion so I made an attempt to do this as shown below

The shapes certainly lend themselves to a black and white conversion as it gives a good feeling of depth. I look forward to learning more about b and w photography in the next part of the course.

Exercise 13: Managing Colour

This exercise concentrates on white balance and is an extension of Exercise 12. The idea was to 'correct' colour cast in three images using your preferred software (in my case Lightroom 3).


I took 3 images which I felt had a slight colour cast, two with known grey surfaces, and adjusted them using the 'W' setting and eye-dropper in Lightroom, but having first set their black and white points. Whilst this did not make a dramatic difference to the image in any of the examples, there were significant changes/improvements. 


NB. For the purposes of this exercise, no other adjustments (contrast, clarity, tone curve etc) within Lightroom were made to the images so that they are not what I would consider as a 'finished product'.

Although the image above seems ok, the trousers are a known grey colour and so using these to set the WB was helpful and resulted in a slightly less yellow tint below.

In the next example, there is another grey surface, although in this case it is considerably larger.

As in the first pair of images, the WB correction, here using the rear sail of the ship as the 'neutral target', results in a slightly cooler image.

Finally, an image where changing the WB led to a warmer image after using the lower part of the balcony window on the extreme edge of the frame.

The adjusted image is preferable, in my view, as it better reflects (no pun intended!) the warm, sunny day.

Exercise 12: Managing Tone

This was quite an interesting exercise as it made me review, and change, my processing technique.


When processing a Raw image, I used to make adjustments first in Lightroom and then in Photoshop. The Photoshop adjustments included checking the black point and white point using Image/Adjustments/Levels. However, Exercise 12 indicated that these points should be set first, before other adjustments.


Therefore, I reviewed a number of images and set the black point and white points in Lightroom. Rather than use the sliders, I did this by hovering the cursor over the histogram and then holding down the cursor in the 'exposure' area and adjusting the curve so that it touched the right side without clipping (white point) and then repeated the procedure within the 'blacks' area of the histogram to set the black point on the left-hand side.


Having set the black pint and white point, my next adjustment was the White Balance. By clicking 'W', I used the White Balance dropper to select a neutral colour. Where a neutral colour was too difficult to isolate, I used the Temp slider. Other adjustments were made as normal using the Tone curve, contrast and clarity sliders before an element of sharpening.


Following the Lightroom adjustments, I opened the images in Photoshop in order to 'convert to the profile' from ProPhoto RGB to sRGB to avoid the images looking flat and de-saturated if sent on the Web.