Simple Toning: Hue Saturation
When I found this photo in my digital archive, I was skeptical of whether it made sense to try to work on it with hue saturation. What could be more perfectly saturated than quivering aspens on a sunny September morning? And a quick look at the histogram almost agrees; it’s just that the black at its extreme end runs away at from the camera’s sensor and the bright white spikes just for a blink at the far right. It didn’t seem possible that working on the image could end in anything good.
Here’s what happened. Increasing saturation just a little (less, admittedly, than the assigned amount) and decreasing the hue slider just a bit — plus three and minus three, respectively — slightly deepened the golden leaves without making them garish, brought out more highlights in the foreground and thus added texture, and increased the overall depth by darkening the middle field: into the woods, children! But not too far!
The composition is practically a parody of ordering up thirds: three equal bands straight across and nothing on the sides. Between the banality of composition and the ubiquity of perfectly ordinary photographs of what is breathtaking splendor, I would never be inclined to print this. But it provided a useful opportunity to experiment within narrow parameters to obtain a surprisingly effective (though still not printable) result.
next page: Around Framing; Simple Toning: Applying Tone into Three Sectors or
return to index