READER’S PICTURES PART 7

I am indebted to Robin Fick and Kevin Cooke for this series of images. There’s little wrong with them, but I will tweak them a bit in a software programme called Photoshop to show you how you can enhance an image using one or two simple tools.

ROBIN FICK’S IMAGES OF THE WILLOW STREAM AT BALLOCH

What I like about this first image is that it really does capture the grandeur of this landscape. Notice how the angler is well placed and lends a sense of proportion to the monumental scale of the topography in this area.

The first thing I did was use the Curves tool, chose the blackest, or darkest spot, and clicked on it with the Curves eye dropper tool.

Then I chose the brightest spot – the white water alongside the angler – and clicked on that with the brightest spot eye dropper tool.

In the next image from Robin I again use Curves, but this time click on the darkest, then the brightest and finally the mid-tone (or neutral grey) area in the picture. For this step I chose the angler’s pants. They are a perfect neutral grey.

Here’s the original image

After clicking on the darkest spot in the image it is left a little dull and has a bluish (cold) tint to it.

Clicking on the brightest area in the image lightens the whole picture a bit.

Finally I click on a mid-tone or neutral grey area and see how the picture warms up.

Finally, Robin takes an excellent shot of typical holding water on the beautiful Willow Stream

THE NEXT SET OF IMAGES IS FROM KEVIN COOKE.

This is a marvellous fly fishing landscape that needs little work, except maybe to remove the date stamp. I do this by dragging a tool called the Spot Healing Brush over the date. In a stroke it has gone and the tool replaces the lost pixels with suitable pixels it matches from nearby the scene.

Below is a lovely image from Kevin of his youngster on the Bell River in the Eastern Cape. Notice how with all the bright light around the camera has been fooled into slightly over-exposing the shot. To prevent this Kevin could have stopped his camera up (in other words set to expose lighter) and not down, to make the camera read the scene as darker, as you would intuitively think things should work! But Photoshop will help. I just clicked on the darkest part of the image using the Curves eye dropper tool.

And I did exactly the same with this image taken at Highland Lodge in the Stormberg area of the Eastern Cape near the town of Dordrecht.

And finally if you had any doubts about the size of the trout in these great lakes, have a look at these Highland Lodge beauties!