A certain mood can create a great impact with monochrome, HDR images. For my “How To Do Stuff” this week, I’m exploring an easy way to transform this colorful shot from River Park North in Greenville NC, to a deeply dramatic, monochrome image.

In the following Short and Simple HTDS video, I demonstrate an artistic approach to modifying images using Adobe Photoshop.  I’ve kept the process short and simple even though further enhancements could be done.

The color version can stand on it’s own as a finished work. But I always like to explore variations for more artistic choices. And, since  the concept of graduated tonality is usually used with color images, I think this exercise with monochrome can be helpful. Especially for those like myself, who want to break out of the point and click mode that we can easily fall into with the plethora of post processing software available.

So, please click below to check the video and let me know what you think.Original image processing: Nine shots from -2 to +2 ev loaded into Nik HDR Efex Pro. I added structure to the scene and applied a shallow S curve. In Adobe Photoshop, I worked with Hue/Saturation for realistic colors and then applied High Pass filter for sharpening.

Equipment used: Nikon D700 with 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 set at 20mm, f/11, ISO 400.