Enhance Color and Detail with Topaz Adjust

One of my favorite things to do is go wander a new place, camera in hand. Its even better if I get to go with a friend! Last night was exactly that kind of evening. I met up with a friend for birthday drinks at Casa Guadalajara in Old Town, San Diego. Then, fueled with a margarita and a few chips, we set off into Old Town, cameras in hand.

We decided to check out Heritage Park’s Victorian Village first. Even though I’ve lived in San Diego for many years, this was my first trip walking through this magical little enclave! To make it even better we had the place mostly to ourselves – perfect shooting conditions! My only regret is that I didn’t take my tripod with me, so, I’ll definitely be going back.

I’m still working on processing last night’s photos but I wanted to take a moment to share one with you today and talk a little bit about how I processed it.

I started out in Lightroom where I enabled the lens correction, removed chromatic abberations, and toned down the highlights just a touch.

Original with Lightroom Adjustments

My next step was to work with the photo in Topaz Adjust. Adjust was the very first photo processing plug-in that I ever purchased and its still one of my favorites!

I wish I could tell you exactly what I did, but unfortunately I didn’t take notes. I clicked through the various presets to get something close to what I wanted and then modified from there. Often I’ll like the colors in one preset and the detail levels in another so I’ll write down the settings from the “detail” panel in one preset, and then click on the color preset I like and modify the detail levels. It works pretty well for me!

After processing in Topaz Adjust I brought the photo back into Lightroom and did a bit of noise reduction, toned the exposure down just a hair, added a vignette, and did some sharpening.

After Topaz Adjust

Now, I could have easily called that good – I liked where it was at, but decided to play with one of my brithday presents: OnOne Perfect Effects. The main reason I wanted this software was for its textures and borders. They are so much fun! For this image I decided to add a border and I think it adds a nice finishing touch.

After On1 Perfect Effects

What do you think? Do you prefer the photo with the border or without? Either way, go get yourself a copy of Topaz Adjust! Don’t forget to enter coupon code ANGANDRIEUX to save 15%!

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