Just a quick note to show you the potential of RAW processing and some Photoshop tweaking. You remember the over exposed duck image I showed that we “tweaked”  in Camera RAW? – See the BEFORE image below:

I did some quick finessing during the class and you saw the improvement. Certainly not where I wanted to go with it, but improved.

As a challenge, I decided to play with the shot some more on my desktop computer in Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop.

a) Processed the RAW image in Adobe Camera RAW to bring back as much wing detail as possible

b) Did a Shadows Highlights correction in Photoshop to further bring in wing detail

c) Clone stamped in wing detail where I couldn′t rescue it via the above means

d) Darkened all the corners with the burn tool

e) Extended the canvas on the right side to “Create” room for the duck to fly

f) Added green pixels to the head to eliminate some of the wing shadow

g) Cropped and sharpened the overall image

The moral of the story is – Remember to shoot using RAW capture and if the photo looks like it has potential, keep it. The obvious throw aways should be moved to the trash, but as your Photoshop skills improve, you′ll use these skills to rescue the photo. Save these images in a “Rescue Later” file and continue to experiment!