Alright, here comes my first try at writing lightroom tutorial. I discovered this technique by accident while editing my shots from Sydney last year. I’ll post the gallery sometime later. In order to do this editing, you need to have at least lightroom v2.0 and download the 300 preset by mikelao. Alright, lets get going.
First of all, this is the plain looking JPG.
1/160 f8.0 ISO 200 at 18mm
Then we crop so the ship follow rule of third
press 'R' inside lightroom to crop
Then we apply the 300v2 preset to get this effect
Awesome effect! but the lower right corner is too dark, and the land is very underexposed!
Just up the exposure to around +0.85 to lighten the mood.
Next we will apply a graduated filter to darken the sky. change it to exposure mode and put -0.80 on the value.
Awesome sky, well lit water, only one problem left, guess which one is it?
Ok, now we will make use of the Adjustment Brush (K) to make the land brigther. Set the size of the brush a little bit smaller than the land, and set the feather around 70.
Paint it carefully, do not let your brush hit the ship, its gonna over expose. Just play around with the exposure to suit your need.
Now the final picture should look like this
Not too shabby huh!
Alright, hope you enjoy the tutorial. This proves that simple JPG is not to be underestimated.