"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Before and After: Red Brick with Ivy

I took this photo of the side of a building near Fishkill, New York. Click on the picture for a larger version, then come back and read more….

Below you can see the original photo and the photo above side by side. There were dozens of white spots in the original, and I removed them one at a time using Adobe Lightroom. That took a while, as you can probably imagine, but I think it helped give the photo some character it didn’t have before, emphasizing the green and yellow leaves without the distraction of white chips in the red paint. The ivy leaves were also out of focus in the original; sharpening adjustments helped the ivy pop out from the red background. I overdid some of the sharpness adjustments, possibly; but I wanted to see how much I could improve the appearance of the leaves and keep the brick background as red and smooth as possible. Besides spot removal, sharpness, and noise reduction, I reduced the saturation of aqua, blue, and purple colors in the photo — which were not that apparent to the eye but eliminated some inconsistencies in the appearance of the red paint on the bricks.

Click either of the pictures to compare a larger before-and-after view.

I added a “Lightroom” category to this blog, so you can see other posts where I’ve written about using Lightroom by clicking this link.

Thanks for reading!