Tonal curve experimentations

I've been following Brian Kraft's blog for a while now; I really like his photography. Anyway, it seems a lot of people, me included, have been after understanding how he gets the 'muted' tones (for want of a better phrase, sorry Brian no disrespect if that's not how you would call it) but answers seem to be scarce other than it's bespoke work in Lightroom.

Well, that set me thinking and I decided to start experimenting a little bit for myself. Now I'm not a Lightroom player, in fact the only Adobe product I have is Photoshop Elements 10 because I got it cheap in Amazon's black Friday the other year, but I do use (wait for it Fuji fans...) SilkyPix RAW file convertor that came packed with my Fuji cameras.

It's a different topic and discussion altogether, but it is a powerful tool and dose the job well in my opinion, however, for the sake of this post any package will do that allows the "digital darkroom's" curve tool.

I've done this as a kind of compare and contrast exercise placing the 'muted' version alongside the more typical, high contrast 'punchy' version. Everyone has their own taste and there is no right or wrong, but here it is: (I've used a scene which I photographed today in my dinner hour with my X100)

Black and White

Colour

As you can see, the changes are only subtle, but in my opinion effective. By pushing the black side of the curve starting point up (in this case about 15% up) and making sure the curve starts off pretty flat and under the diagonal, you get slightly more muted blacks while still retaining depth. It gives a kind of aged look and feel I think.

I realise this taste may not be for everyone, but I hope it shows that by pushing the "digital darkroom's" conventions and norms that there are some nice effects to be had.

I'm not a big fan of 'photoshoping' pictures to make them what they aren't, and these are just tonal adjustments with a colour profile added in SilkyPix.

Hope this was of interest - thoughts and feedback welcome!