D3 Raw Shoot

As usual, click on images to show bigger. The image above shows a before/after view of this Raw processed image.

Details below.

I used Lightroom to manipulate this Nikon D3 Raw image. It certainly looked flat before I started the post processing. The jpeg equivalent was much better until I played with the image. I ended up reducing the exposure by 1/2 a stop (I tend to shoot bright to get as much detail as possible into the image). I then recovered a slight highlight blowout on Cait's life vest. 10 worked well. Next was a fill light of 20 to gain detail back in shadows under Baden's arm, and finally I increased the Blacks to 6 to give the image some overall punch. Brightness was reduced to 33 and contrast was left as is at the default of 25.

I then wanted to increase the local contrast/sharpness in the midtones (faces) so increased clarity to 16. Vibrance was increased to 18 to richen the colours in the skin of Cait and Baden and increase the blues in the water.

The strong contrast preset worked well here using the tone curve as the image was a flat. Typical of a Raw image.

I then applied the portrait sharpening preset which resulted in keeping the skin smooth but sharpening edges in the image.

A Lens Vignetting followed to keep the viewer in the image. Settings were Amount -80, Midpoint 6.

The whole process took around 2 minutes, followed by a jpeg export which converts the res to 72 dpi and changes the colour space from Pro Photo to sRGB (suitable for the web).

Job Done!