How to get these kind of tones?

nerwin

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I follow this photographer on Flickr and I'm trying to figure out how she gets the greens to look muted and not so yellow. I tried and tried in Lightroom and I couldn't get any of my greens to look like hers.

I don't want to copy or anything, but there is something I like about the way she processes her photos and I would like to explore it a little to see why I like it so much. Also would be nice to know how to do this for future processing.

I'm going to say there is some desaturation involved but some of the colors are still punchy. I tried to mess around with the HSL and even the tone curves to see if I can get it close but failed.

Here are some of the shots I'm talking about.

1. Sabbaday Falls

2. Fenway!

3. Breakfast is my favorite part 2

4. Back to Kancamagus

5. John Hancock Tower - Boston

6. Somerville, MA

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Why don't you ask the photographer? Hard to really guess without seeing the original.
 
Why don't you ask the photographer? Hard to really guess without seeing the original.

I'll give it a shot, but I find that not many reply back on Flickr. I just don't want to come across as someone trying to copy her style because I don't want to, just simply learning and hopefully pulling an element out of it that I like. For all I know, she's using a preset.
 
short answer: clip your blacks.

the histograms are left heavy, but extend fully to the right...

long answer:

When I process, one of the first things I do is adjust the blacks level. I will slide the blacks to a point to where they are just clipping, and possibly push it further if there's not useful information.

then I will next grab the whites slider and pull it up until I'm barely clipping whites.

She probably does something similar, but then alters the curves or shadows to then darken those mid-range tones. I also think a lot of her shots are slightly underexposed, where I like my shots to be a bit brighter. I love rich deep blacks in shots, but I don't like big blocks of black where you should be seeing color. Like the nose of the dog in that one example shot.

her white balance is also on the cool side, were I prefer very warm. I also always push my WB 1000K or so to the yellow.

here's a random shot of mine, where I went back in dragged the blacks down on the curves layer and moved the mids a bit with the levels slider:

upload_2016-7-28_8-23-50.png


I tired to keep the whites at the same level, so the scene still looks bright and sunny as you'd expect, but overall the image is darker since i richened up the darks and mids.
 
Last edited:
This is something I've been working on myself which I think works really great for city/urban type shots but once I apply this to a landscape it makes everything look like its autumn. Haha. But I do like it and proud of myself I created it.

Original RAW

Erwin-120611-5506-2.jpg


Processed by me

Erwin-120611-5506.jpg
 
I think what you are doing is the opposite of what I think she is doing.
She is pulling the dark tones down and you are raising the dark tones.
Your original shot looks a bit underexposed because of the bright sky and glare from the street.
 
I think I'm going to give up and say it's a Canon thing. Lol.

I'm just struggling trying to find my own style, maybe it will come with time. But I'm just tired of jumping over the place...I just want to make something that works for me which I can stick with and build upon as I grow.
 
I agree with Lew, looks like it would help to work on getting proper exposures. Might be at least partly why you're struggling with edits.
 
I seriously don't see how it's that underexposed. How many stops? a 3rd? Big deal lol. I took this shot 5 years ago and the sky was white anyways because it was cloudy, there isn't anything to recover. I don't mind the sky is blown out, doesn't bother me.

If it's that dark to everyone else, then my monitor must too bright but it's calibrated.

I didn't really ask to get my photo critiqued, I know I'm not that good. But thanks anyways. haha.

Thanks for trying to help, I appreciate it. But it just doesn't matter since we all are different. All I really wanted to know was how to mess with the greens but I'll figure it out on my own.
 
Mind if I try to edit?
 
Because it was a jpeg file that I had, the sky is messed up but in general this is what she is doing.
Erwin-120611-5506-2.jpg
 
I think I'm going to give up and say it's a Canon thing. Lol.

I'm just struggling trying to find my own style, maybe it will come with time. But I'm just tired of jumping over the place...I just want to make something that works for me which I can stick with and build upon as I grow.

Finding my own style took a few years, using actions other people made, and mimicking styles I liked. I think it's part of the process of finding your own way. What I took away from emulating others was learning how to do things in photoshop and understanding how the mechanics of photoshop worked.
 
Because it was a jpeg file that I had, the sky is messed up but in general this is what she is doing. View attachment 125223
I wholeheartedly disagree here. Did you even look at the example, or the rest of her Flickr?!?!

A dull gray, heavily vignetted image is NOT what she's doing.
 

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