Yesterday’s post was an image I admit I had a struggle getting to a point where I was happy with it. Today I want to show how I started out with the image and how I got it to a place where it got two (count them, two) Wow’s on Instagram.

Like I said yesterday I really wasn’t happy with the series of images I took of my wifes new Persian Shield plant. I captured the images with my X-T2 and the Fujinon XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR Lens. The plant was out in the back lanai and was shot about 2 hours after sunrise. The plant was in the shade of another plant so there was just indirect daylight on the image.

This is the image as it came from the camera with the standard Capture One import processing applied. I shoot using the STD/Provia camera profile as a default and I think I had this image underexposed by a full stop. I usually have a -2/3 stop compensation but I didn’t want any extraneous sun blowing out the image.

THe image is pretty boring as there isn’t a main subject or focal point, mostly purple leaves. After staring at it for a while I decided to try a 4×5 crop of part of the image to see if I could find a better balance. Below is the image after cropping.

There are a few adjustments on the image and I changed the camera profile to Velvia as this image is all about the bright purple. I adjusted black and white points. As an aside I usually have the levels tool set those points but end up back off the white point as I always think it gets to bright if left at the defaults. I made a few HDR adjustments and added a little clarity.

My final processing was done with Nik Software (version 3.0? which it the latest). I do all the Nik adjustments in Photoshop so that I can control and if necessary re-adjust any changes. Once I open an image in Photoshop I don’t make any further in Capture One. If I find I need to make an adjustment like cleaning up a dust spot I delete the Photoshop .psd file and start again. To convert to Photoshop you use the Edit With menu item and choose Photoshop as your destination. Capture One creates the .psd and launches Photoshop to process your image as a Variant.

Once the image is in Photoshop the first thing I do is convert the background layer to a smart object. I do this so much I set up a hotkey to automate this process but you can right click on the layer or go to the Layers menu to make it a smart object. I then launch Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 and apply any filters I want to get the image looking right. My tastes change over time but I usually apply the Detail Extract to sharpen up the image and a bit of Pro Contrast which gives it more depth. And finally use the Darken/Lighten Center as a Vignette.

Once the image is processed by Nik I bring it back into Photoshop. In this case I added Nik’s Dfine 2 to reduce a little noise as this image was shot at ISO 640. After applying the changes the layers panel looks like the below. I you then want to adjust something in Color Efex or Dfine you can click on the filter to bring up Nik with the same filters.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with borders on my images. Alway used to be black 10px border but now I’m testing a white border. In either case I have an action that applies the black border that I can adjust the style to white if it fits my mood.

With all the adjustments done I close and save the .psd file which update the variant in Capture One. I usually then compare the variant with the base adjusted image. If there is something more I need to do in Photoshop I can use the Image/Open WIth menu item to bring it back into Photoshop with all the layers intact.

And the final image looks like this.