We took hundreds of pictures of the fog wrapping China’s Yellow Mountains but we simply couldn’t find a way to process them that met our expectations. After many months of trying our clever Photoshop tricks, we decided to dust off the NIK Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin and give that a go. These images are not what we hoped for but they’re better than anything else we’ve processed so far.
The trick with all plugins is to be able to see what the basic defaults are doing and then make them your own. For the below images we started with the Full Spectrum default. Of all the defaults, this one provided the most compelling image.
We then changed the contrast to +33, and lowered the structure to -4. To add grain and darkness to the images, we then set the film stock to be Kodak’s ISO32 Panatonic X. This is a dark film stock so the next step is to change the default curve to have more light in the black regions.
By then setting the tone to type 3 (slightly yellow) and the lens falloff to either 1 or 2, we finally have an image that’s close to what we had in our head when the shutter snapped all those months ago.
Without further ado we present to you our photos of the Huangshan mountain range in southern Anhui province in eastern China, also know as Yellow Mountains.
And as light relief for you, here’s a few signs that we spotted in the hills. They’re awesome.
And finally, the center piece of the mountains is the China Grand Canyon. Here’s our photo of it.
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