Sometimes it takes post processing to save an image. In this case, I was photographing flowers around our cabin in the Eastern Sierra in natural light. Since the flower was in sunlight and the background was in shadow, I was able to get a nice, deep black as my backdrop. However, the flower needed some touchup to bring it back…

In a few short years Nik plug-ins have completely changed my workflow.  Years ago I had very little use for plug-ins, thinking that I could use Photoshop to make whatever adjustments an image needed.  After all, I write books on software, including Photoshop, and am reasonably adept at using it.  But when I began experimenting with Color Efex Pro, I…