From time to time, I like to take a look through my photo library and see if there are any images I have that I could reprocess and come up with something different. Taking the various tools in Lightroom and Photoshop and combining them with your own creativity, a single file can become as many images as your imagination can provide, each with its own look and mood.
After taking another look at the picture I posted last week of the mums on my front porch, I decided to try to come up with something a little more “outside the box.” The one thing that jumped out to me was just how much yellow there was. It obviously was the predominant color in the photograph. While I liked the yellow and it was what I saw with my eyes, I began to wonder what would happen if I reduced it.
Reopening the original RAW file, I created a snapshot of my original processing. This would allow me to quickly and easily get back to my original settings if I didn’t like what the new adjustments did. Then, I began toying with the various color saturation sliders. Adding some saturation to the red and orange tones, removing all of the green and most of the yellow tones, and cropping to a 4:3 aspect ratio brought me to this final image in which most of the leaves are a grayish white with a splash of color in the center petals.
While I like both last week’s original photograph with the yellow mums and this one, I think this desaturated image provides a unique and interesting picture that I find pleasing and rather unexpected.