One adjustment photo challenge

Today’s challenge is to process a photo using only one type of ajustement. I’m presenting this mainly because I want to show you how powerful this operation is and stress how important role it plays in my image processing workflow. In many cases it’s the most visible adjustement of all, especially when comparing the before and after picture.

To comply with the initial rule I will skip all the initial steps like cropping and straightening the horizon, so keep in mind that it is literally one type of adjustement.

Here’s what we start with:

and here’s the result of our processing:

Which adjustment is it? Watch the movie below to find out!

And here is a list of most used keyboard shortcuts in the video:

• b – brush tool
• [ – decrease brush size
• ] – increase brush size
• cmd+d/ctrl+d – deselect
• cmd+h/ctrl+h – hide current selection
• cmd+I/ctrl+I – invert (mask)

What’s more?

From what I’ve noticed there are two group of people. The first one uses curves for the contrast adjustments, the other one prefers levels. I’m definitely a fan of the latter. The workflow I presented in the video is just a basic approach which might be extended by using separate channels and focus on specific colours  Levels might be also used to correct the white balance on your photographs. I don’t really use the auto button, but for the beginners it might be useful too, especially for initial adjustments.