23. Selective processing and prominence

The ability of modern image processing software to enable selective dodging and burning in a photograph continues to impress me and in particular the inclusion of these capabilities within my chosen workflow tool, Lightroom, has added significant creative options to how I process photographs.  For this exercise I have limited the processing to use of the adjustment brush in Lightroom, in fact I almost never use Photoshop now for anything other than printing.

The image I have selected was one taken during the development of Assignment 3, an image of a platform in a dark subway station

The target individual is the man in the center standing in the middle of the platform.  I created a virtual copy of this image and then painted a mask onto the figure using a hard edges brush.  I then created two further virtual copies and raised the exposure of the first mask by half a stop and lowered the second by the same amount to create the following two images

I found that going much more than half a stop created an artificial look to the image.  The white T-shirt on the man in the right of the frame was rather distracting, so a second application of the brush and a much greater decrease in exposure brought me to the final version, where the man in center frame is brought forward and the man in the background pushed back

So that was my final exercise.  When I first received the materials for this course, I was struck by the relative lack of content in comparison to TAOP, however, having now completed the exercises I do realize that this has allowed me to bring much more focus onto the assignments, but provided enough learning points to continue to build my skill set.  Well balanced!!!!