Earlier today, I was looking the Ansel Adams Gallery’s special sale of platinum-palladium prints by Kerik Kouklis – which got me exploring some new techniques using a Curves adjustment layer for toning in Photoshop.
I decided to try the technique on an image shot in October 2010 along the Merced River in Yosemite. My son David and I were doing a private workshop that day with Michael Frye – and this location was one of the special spots Michael shared with us. A color HDR version of some other photos of Three Brothers is one of my favorites from that day.
This image is a single shot RAW image taken on a tripod with my Canon 5D Mark II using the Canon 24-105mm f/4 L lens. I processed it in Photoshop CC using a few of Tony Kuyper’s basic luminosity masking techniques, converted it to black and white using a gradient map, sharpened it using the Sharpen 2013 action of Don Margulis’ Picture Postcard Workflow – and then toned it using a curves adjustment layer using a curve from Paul Butzi.