Members Photographic Articles

I've recently been playing with a plugin from Nik Software and wanted to give you a very quick introduction to this plugin and what it can do to make your subject pop out of your photo.

The following image was taken today at Craig-Y-Nos, South Wales. I saw this little robin sitting on a wooden handrail and took a quick shot.

Before

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After

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I thought I'd give the little robin some PS treatment as he was looking a little lost there compared to the vibrance of the background and to do this I used the Viveza plugin from Nik Software.

This is not a detailed tutorial but I wanted to share with you how quickly you can make something pop in an image using this excellent plugin.

Firstly, I created a copy of the layer not to destroy the original photo.

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Then chose the Viveza plugin from my filters menu.

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With Viveza open, I next needed to add a control point.

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I placed the control point at the centre of the robin and using the light small gray dot, I then clicked and held the dot and moved my mouse until the circular mask was just about the size of the robin.

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Next, I adjusted the brightness to 59%.

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I then added more contrast to bring out extra detail in the robin.

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Finally, I then chose to add more saturation to the area to bring out the colours a lot more.

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There are a whole lot more settings you can use but you can see from the final image below how quick it was to really bring this little bird more into the foreground.

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To find out more about Viveza and what it can do, you get further details from Nik Software:

Nik Software, Inc. | Viveza