Post: # 17786Post
Andy
Sun Aug 24, 2014 3:54 pm
A couple years back, I "invested" in some "add-on" software for my post-production work in Photoshop. This add-on software works almost equally well with Adobe Lightroom. If I wasn't so "invested" in Photoshop, I probably would work exclusively in Lightroom these days. It was developed for photographers and is a wonderful, full-featured program, including a great cataloging program, for post-production for photographers - and substantially less expensive than Photoshop.
My add-on "suite" of software was originally offered by a company called NIK software. A year or so back, Google bought them and in spite of our greatest concerns, have left it more or less intact, and have made it easier and less costly to acquire. I HIGHLY recommend acquiring it and installing it as a add-on to your Lightroom, Photoshop or both. If you can do the whole suite, do. If you can only do one, do Viveza2. Our good friend, Carol (Abby) turned me on to this software and after some initial stand-offishness, I tried it and have never looked back!
I spent countless hours and many years trying to perfect Photoshop techniques - especially selection and layering. Good post production often requires selection of specific areas of an image and adjustments only in that area. Before the NIK software, this was painstaking and time consuming and most people just didn't do it. The NIK suite of software takes all the work out of it. You can open an image in Viveza2 for example and set a selection point and use a slider to make it larger or smaller, and then apply effects to light or darken the image, to selectively adjust the color and saturation and contrast, and even to use an effect that is similar to sharpening, selectively. It is fast and easy and the results are remarkable. It is well worth the cost, if you are serious about getting the most out of your images.
Of course, raw images work best in this program. And especially raw images that have been properly adjusted in the raw converter that is embedded in both Photoshop and Lightroom.
I would bring your image into Viveza2 and work the sky to bring out details and darken, add contrast and perhaps saturate it more. This would take literally minutes in Viveza2
I would show you, but some time back I established a rule here that we should not download and work on another person's image without their permission. If I have your permission, I will demonstrate.
Andy
If it sounds too good to be true, its probably . . . .