The Bridge to ForeverOcean Beach Pier and Dramatic Sunset Sky in San Diego California USA. San Diego Photo Album

High Res: 5226 x 3425, 10.5 MB

There are 2 schools of photographers out there.   First, more traditional one, prefers to use image as it comes out of camera with minimal post-processing. Second on the contrary treats RAW image files just as blueprint for further manipulation in Adobe Photoshop or similar image editing software tools.  I belong somewhere in the middle, but believe at least learning what can be done with digital post-processing can only benefit you.  In this post I am sharing 2 techniques that opened new doors for my photography:

1.  Sky Replacement  -  sometimes you have great landscape image, but sky is just not "right".  My Ocean Beach Pier image in San Diego, was originally shot with dreary, grey sky that simply ruined the scene.   I had several nice sky shots in my library and following this tutorial ended up with image above that looks much more interesting and dramatic.  
2. Split toning - refers to technique of having both warm and cold tones alternatively present in the image.  In landscape photography for instance, you can decide to use warm colors for shadows and cold tones for highlights.   These are two tutorials I found very interesting:   YouTube Video  and Alamy Blog