Some of you may know that I write blog posts on dark sky photography for Shutter Evolve which is a blog that offers loads of helpful hints and tips for photographers. It is run by Duke McIntyre the brother of Jimmy McIntyre who created Raya Pro, Lumi 32 and various other plug in's for photoshop.
These are widely regarded as the best plugin's that you can get and they certainly make editing your photos so much easier. Especially as Jimmy has accompanying videos that are easy to follow along with and he even supplies images that you can edit.
Now let's be clear, I am still not an expert in editing my photos in photoshop but its something that I am determined to master. Like anything in life, you have to put in the effort to learn and develop a new skill, editing photos in no exception. What I am finding really gratifying is that I am now able to create a final edit that I have pictured in my mind whilst out in the field.
Take the image above, up to a few months ago, I wouldn't have known where to start to create this effect even though I knew what I wanted to create and had the skill to capture the composition. Some of you may look at and absolutely hate it. You know what, this is absolutely fine with me. Photography and editing are art after all. What someone loves will be not float someone else's boat.
Here is the original unedited image straight out of the camera, which you can see has no depth at all to it. My intention was to create a composition that leads your eye through it and has plenty of interest to look at. I wanted to end up with an ethereal look. Hopefully I have achieved that, but please feel free to comment. I have however just seen that in the bottom right of the image there is some sort of grey / white branch that really doesn't have any place there - that's easily removed though.
If you would like to learn with Jimmy too then you can find details on how to download the plugins at