Before and After: Blue Lake

Photographed this past summer at Schnormeier Gardens just outside Gambier, Ohio, is this shot of the lake in front of the house. With this photo, I wanted to try something different so I went with this idea of a black and white but with a blue tone.

I started in Adobe Lightroom CC by merging three exposures by using Lightroom's Merged to HDR. Then I open the HDR photo into Adobe Photoshop CC as a smart object and then proceeded to open the photo into ON1 Photo Raw 2019 plugin. In Photo Raw, I started with one of the LUTs that come with Photo Raw, one called Dark Night. Next comes a Tone Enhancer filter and used the Clarity setting as well as brighten up the whites with the Whites slider. A Photo Filter was then applied with the Skylight setting and then I added a Raw Hide Texture which I then masked out the center so the texture only applied to the outer edges. Next comes a Lens Blur and used a mask to apply the blur where I wanted it. And finally, I finished it off with a Viewfinder 002 border.

#beforeandafter #photoediting

The final edited photo using Adobe Lightroom CC and ON1 Photo Raw 2019.

The original photo I started with before editing.