Last night I was at my local and the Lumix GX8 with a 20mm f1.7 lens was in my hand. Played with some presets. Shot RAW and jpeg.

And, since I wasn’t really thinking I never moved away from the 1.7 f stop. But, it’s pretty amazing what you can do in post to save an image. Just to make it a little tougher I used one of the saved jpegs with a deep BW setting to work with.

The first image is straight out of camera.

beer photo

This is SOOC with a deep contrast BW setting from the camera

photo of beer

I opened the above jpeg in Adobe Camera Raw by highlighting the image in Adobe Bridge and pushing CMD R MAC, (CTRL R PC) This gives you all the controls or ACR although it doesn’t give you access to the RAW info of the file it allows you to use the adjustment tools.

In this case I added a good dose of clarity to add a bit of tooth to the image, opened up the shadows, knocked down the highlights and opened up the shadows just a bit with a curves bump. Both have an interesting feel but I feel the second one with just a touch more punch worked better.

Yours in Creative Photography,      Bob