I am trying to find a way to improve my post processing skills. The aim here is to try to create beautiful photographs from crappy shots. Each photographer has his or her own technique unfortunately it seems that people like to keep these things secret.

You think you have an awesome style / technique? Do you think you can convert something that would normally be thrown away into something that looks interesting. Try applying it on the sample photo. You can use anything tool under the sun, do as heavy an editing job as you want.

It is fine if you want to keep your workflow secret, but it would be nice if you could share how you did it. The goal is to learn from one another

Here’s the challenge photo. Untouched, straight out of the camera.

Get the RAW file here: in NEF or full-size JPEG.

Let me know if you need it in a different format.

To start off, here is my attempt:

Lightroom:
adjusted white balance
adjusted tone settings (exposure, recovery, fill light, blacks, curve saturation)
increased sharpness

Photoshop:
[layer4] background duplicate set to soft light mode, around 15% opacity.
[layer3] background duplicate set to overlay mode, around 15% opacity.
[layer2] curve adjustment, mask for clouds. white point set to lightest area
[layer1] curve adjustment, mask excluding clouds. white point set to one of the flowers and black point set to one of the dark corners on the lower left area. s-shaped curve for increased contrast
[background] imported from RAW with Lightroom 2 adjustments

Looking forward to seeing some excellent results. Have fun!!!

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