Horned Puffin
Seward SeaLife Center, AK
July 2008

Post-processing photos is boring compared to the time spent taking them, in my opinion. Occasionally though, I find myself having fun and learning new tricks. This shot was taken indoors with less than optimal lighting. The tint of the water was a dark greenish-black and the bird’s feathers were a muted gray. Since the Puffin was not in the best lighting, I decided to alter the original photo into a Black-and-White rendering. While using presets in Adobe Lightroom is a great time-saver, I don’t use them for converting black-and-white photos. Using the vibrance and saturation sliders gives me more control over the contrast. In the process of converting this photo the background and the colors of the feathers easily converted while the bright coloring on the beak required stronger measures to convert to Black-and-White. I happened on this half-way version that I really liked.