The photograph above was taken in Amarillo, TX.
Processing Notes: I used a single raw file as the base for this image. I processed it twice, once for the sky and once for the sign, stacked the results in Photoshop and added a mask to the top layer to control where it would affect the image. I then added an empty adjustment layer (one that did not change the image) and set its blending mode to multiply (or maybe it was overlay, I don’t remember), which caused the blue in the sky to become much more vivid and also exaggerated the natural vignetting that was happening around the edge of the image. I also applied the find edges filter in multiply mode and the highpass filter in overlay mode to the sign to exaggerate the detail. I then darkened a few spots in the trees that were near the edge of the image and retouched out the branches on the right and the contrail on the left. Tip: If you image does not contain a background layer, then you can use the crop tool in Hide mode. Just click and drag on the image with the crop tool and then look at the options bar at the top of your screen to choose Hide mode. That way the cropping is not permanent. I can always choose Image>Reveal All to get back the full-frame image, just in case I need a more horizontal version. I perform cropping at the end to make sure all my masks and retouching look right when viewing the full frame version of the image. Here’s what the original photograph looked like when processed using default settings in Adobe Camera Raw.
