Magic number three in a continuing journey of “true-to-mind” edits of photographs takes me to an old shot (a few months ago) of some moss near a riverbank. It was a bland day, overcast, misty, and chilly. Basically, not the best time to be out and about taking a lot of pictures. I didn’t care. My steadfast resolve led to this rather flat and lifeless original shot:
50mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/640
In real life, that’s about what this scene looked like. It lacked color, contrast, and “pop”.
So, about 10 minutes and some home-brewed tone-mapping later, this is what I had envisioned—a 3-D effect of sorts with the moss almost separating itself from the rock. I believe it worked:
Now that’s more like it
Anyway, it’s always fun to see just what you can pull out of a single exposure. I might have to see what I can do with HDR sometime. Photomatix, anyone? 🙂
Take care guys and gals, and as always, have a great day!
Matthew Durr Photography 
Hey, could you explain to me what tone-mapping is, and what you did to this photo in terms of PS manipulation? Did you shoot in RAW?
Thanks,
Sure thing. Tone-mapping is a form of mild HDR photography that cane be accomplished with only one exposure (versus multiple doing “true” HDR). A tone-mapped photograph is one that has been altered beyond its original capture to recover light and dark tones (typically called recovering blown highlights and boosting crushed shadows). A good tone-mapped photograph will represent a scene almost exactly as you saw it. In my case, I used it to create a surreal look.
Some programs exist (like Photoshop or Photomatix), that does this tone-mapping for you. I, however, just use the sliders in Lightroom 4 to achieve the best tonal representation (in the cases where I do a tone-map). Tone-mapping tends to reduce contrast a fair bit, so after getting your highlights and shadows back, make sure to add a bit back.
And yes, I always shoot RAW. It gives you the maximum post-processing flexibility: increased pixel-level sharpness, much-increased dynamic range (critical for tone-mapping), and the ability to instantly correct a faulty white balance without penalty.