Managing tone.

Exercise: Managing tone.

As I always shoot in RAW I carried out this exercise using the RAW converter in Photoshop.  The camera was a Canon G12 and shot at f4 and hand held at 1/8 sec.

The picture I chose was one I took in the caves at Dambulla in Sri Lanka where there is a series of natural caves that are all shrines to Buddha and contain many images of him.

The caves are dimly lit, to preserve their colour, with a mixture of natural and artificial lighting.

The original is both dark and dull and requires some work.

For the first attempt I used the tone and curve controls only to improve the image.  The result is not what I would call the finished product as I have not changed other variables within the file.  It is, however, an improvement.

For the second attempt I used only the standard sliders, setting the black and white points and making further changes by employing the brightness, black, and recovery sliders.  Again, this is not a finished product but is an improvement on the original

The last image is where I have combined the two techniques to improve the image, plus adding a little vibrancy and saturation.  This is now approaching the finished article.  This is now close to what I remember when viewing the statue.