Derwentwater Rowing Boat

Derwentwater Rowing Boat, originally uploaded by marush1.

The workshop is now over and I have a headache of migraine proportions from all the information John (Gravett) has fed us.
I now look at my image processing in a different way, with emphasis on the detailed structure of the image rather than global values. This much more how I used to process images in the darkroom, using a processing plan of the areas I wanted to dodge and burn. It is slow going at the moment but as I get the processing steps buttoned down and instinctive it will speed up. There are plug-ins available to assist in the process and one of the most effective is Silver Efex Pro. This image was converted to B&W using that plug-in and took not much more than 15 seconds to achieve from the basic converted Raw file. Just time enough to open the plug-in, select the preset I wanted to use, move a couple of sliders and save the B&W file. Doing the same thing directly in Photoshop would have taken me upwards of an hour at my present level of ability. The time saving alone justifies, to me, the cost of the plug-in.