Recently I was looking through some old images and I came across the image below. It is a photograph of an 'old school gas pump' in front of a vintage hardware store. I liked the photograph, but I thought it looked flat, dull and needed some cleaning up. The photograph was taken in Lancaster Pennsylvania back in 2008.

Canon Powershot A80, 7.8mm, 1/500 sec at F/5.0, ISO 50

Step One

First, some background information on this photograph - it was taken with a Canon Powershot A80. Yes a point and shoot camera! Regardless of the kind of camera you use, great images can be made with any camera. You just have to put your mind to it and be creative.

Adjustments made in Adobe Lightroom's 'Basic' panel

After finding this image, the first thing I did was to bring it into Adobe Lightroom. As I've mentioned, I keep all of my images in Lightroom. The first thing I did with the image was to go into the Develop module and make some global adjustments. I increased the contrast, reduced the highlights, opened up the shadows, subtly reduced the whites and increased the blacks. I also added a hint of clarity to help tighten everything up a bit. Be careful with the clarity sliders. Drastically increasing the clarity can create an unrealistic looking image. Of course there are always exceptions - for example if you are trying to go for an HDR look for your image, the clarity slider will help you achieve that look.

Image after being processed in Lightroom

Screen Shot 2014-05-04 at 10.03.26 PM.png

Step 2

After some quick global adjustments in Lightroom, it's time to bring the image over to Adobe Photoshop for some retouching and enhancements. I brought the image over to Photoshop using the Cmd + E shortcut. You can also select the image, go to the menu bar and select Photo > Edit In > Edit In Adobe Photoshop CC (or the version you have).

First I created a new layer above the background layer titled 'Retouching'. I went through the entire image and removed all of the distractions, wires, pavement markings, imperfections in the gas pump, and shadows I didn't want to see.

Image with Lightroom adjustments in Photoshop.  Yellow arrows indicate the major areas to be retouched. — Image with Lightroom adjustments in Photoshop. Yellow arrows indicate the major areas to be retouched.

Image in Photoshop after retouching is complete.

Step 3

Next, I combine the background image and the retouching layer using Shift + Opt + Cmd + E on the Mac (Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E on a PC). This shortcut makes a new flattened layer of all the layers below it.

Step 4

The next thing I'd like to do is make some adjustments to help the overall contrast of the image. I added a curves adjustment layer and created a slight 'S' curve to help darken the shadows a bit and lighten the highlights a little. Next I added an additional curves adjustments layer to open the shadows up just a little bit.

Step 5

After the curves adjustment layers, I added a new layer to do some dodging & burning. The layer was filled with 50% gray and set to the Soft Light layer blend mode. By using the Soft Light blend mode, the gray will be invisible. However, any areas that are dodged and burned will appear. I then used the dodge and burn tools on that layer to darken and lighten various areas of the photo. This helps bring back some depth into the image. After the dodging and burning is complete, I lowered the layer opacity to 55%.

Step 6

Once I was finished with dodging and burning, I added a gradient map adjustment layer. I reduced the gradient map adjustment layer opacity to 10% and changed the blend mode to Soft Light. I felt that it added a little more contrast/punch to the image and gave it that little extra boost.

Step 7

At this point, I felt the image process and retouching were complete. The second to last step was to add some sharpening to the image. To do this, I used the High Pass filter. First, create a merged layer using Sift + Opt + Cmd + E on a Mac. Next, go to Filter > Other > High Pass to bring up the High Pass filter window. I used 1.5 pixels for the radius size, but you can play with different amounts to see what works for your image. Click OK. The layer blend mode should be set to either Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light. Each blend mode will give you a varying amount of intensity of the High Pass layer. In this case, I chose Hard Light and reduced the opacity to 50%.

Step 8

Finally to complete the image, I added a Post Crop Vignette. To do this, I again merged all the layers together using Shift + Opt + Cmd + E, then went to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. I then went to the Effects panel and added the vignette. With the vignette added, the image is complete. I simply saved it and closed it to bring it back into Lightroom. Below is the final image I ended up with. Overall I am happy with the end result.