How I Created the Bristlecone Pine in Color

The photo was taken at Mt. Evans, CO, about 45 miles west of Denver, on 7/6/07 at an elevation near 12k ftabsl. This area is near my home, so I go here often, and post many photos showing this region. Sadly, it is now closed, not to open until Memorial Day (May 08) -- SNOW and lots of it.

I took the photo with my D200 using a Nikkor 80-200 f2.8 lens at 80mm (or 120mm @35mm), which was exposed at 1/40 sec., f9.0 and ISO 100.

Now, the following figure shows the layers I used. My post processing technique may be cumbersome, and arguably unnecessary, if so I welcome any suggestions for improvement.

Post processing steps:

1. Load image with PSCS3 Raw converter

2.Check and repair chromatic abberations and add some clarity

3. Open image into PSCS3

4. Add Curves 1 adjusment layer to darken foreground, and painted away from tree.

5. Add Hue/Saturation 1 adjusment layer to intensify red/orange color of wood; painting out areas I did not want affected.

6. Add Black & White 1 adjustment layer to modify sky color blended as difference

7. Paint out B/W adjusment from tree and foreground

8. Two neutral grey gradients were added: one reflected top and bottom, painted away for effect; and, two, radial, light in center to give lighting preference to the tree. Each soft light blended at 40%

9. A levels adjustment layer was added to produce a global contrast increase.

10. Lastly, I copied the backgound layer to create a sharpening layer using Smart Sharpen with a radius of 2px and tonal width of 15 and 20 for shadows ansd highlights respectively, with 20% fade; layer blended in luminosity as opacity was adjusted just below visible haloing (about 56%).