This is a view of Bridalveil Falls and Cathedral Spires in Yosemite Valley processed to simulate a pinhole camera: vignetting at the edges, softness, brightness in the center, high depth-of-field, and an overall antique look.

Digital simulations of “looks” from the back pages of classic analog photography are great fun!

To enhance this monochromatic winter vista of Yosemite, I used a split toning effect. I added a deeper sepia tone to the darker tones, and lighter sepia to the brighter areas of the image.

In the analog darkroom, toning was a function of paper, processing and chemistry. Split toning was achieved by altering the process so that highlights were handled differently from the dark areas of the photo; for example, by stopping a chemical bath at an earlier point than normal.

In the Photoshop darkroom toning and split toning are, of course, virtual—like the entire digital monochromatic process. Digital black and white is an aesthetic intention with soul, a willful abnegation of color, and an intentional and anachronistic reference to the historical craft of photography.

You can learn more about toning and split toning techniques in Photoshop in Creative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Technques.

This is a photograph of an ice storm in Yosemite Valley. The lines in the ice on the trees could easily have looked “yucky” when they were sharpened. We’ve all seen oversharpened photos. Yucky. Now there’s a technical term for you!

Fortunately, there is a better way than conventional sharpening tools. I use the image of the Yosemite ice storm to demonstrate the sweetness of selective sharpening with LAB color for compositional purposes in my latest Photo.net column about creativity in the Photoshop darkroom.

Here’s the full description: This tutorial has nothing to do with turning blurry or shaky hand-held images into tack sharp masterpieces. Rather, the point of the article is to teach you how to sharpen selectively or compositionally using LAB color. This can be done to direct the viewer to certain parts of the image. Harold Davis walks you through how to convert to LAB color, and then how to apply a series of sharpen masks and layers to selectively and artistically sharpen your images.

Check out Sharpening in LAB Color, and then try your hand at sharpening your own images with this way cool technique.

I converted this image of winter reflections in Yosemite Valley to black and white using one of the simplest conversion techniques from a RAW original. The Grayscale Mix on the HSL/Grayscale tab of Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) does it all in only a few clicks, and provides a fair amount of control over the conversion. You can get good results this way quite quickly.

In my previous post I showed a photo taken a few years ago of Yosemite Valley—and noted that the work of a digital photography is never definitively done. It’s tempting, and often but not always an improvement, to rework the post-processing of older images; or to process images bypassed in the first edit.

You also don’t need to make an either-or choice between color and black & white. This image shown in this story was re-purposed into monochrome from the color photo in the last story. I created the dramatic black-and-white sky using a high contrast Red filter b&w adjustment layer in Photoshop, in case you are interested.

There’s some disagreement over on Flickr as to whether the black & white or color version is preferred (see the linked comments). I say, why not have both? A “two-fer”…

Love may mean never having to say sorry—but digital means you’re never definitively done. This is a re-work of a RAW file originally shot in 2007 of Yosemite Valley in late February following a dusting with snow.

This pond is found along the Tioga Pass road in the high country of Yosemite National Park. In Photoshop, I multi-processed the RAW file to make the sky darker and lighten the water.

Exposure data: 18mm, circular Polarizer, 1/160 of a second at f/11 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

My Yosemite Dreaming set on Flickr.

Briefly noted: This is a re-cropped (and slightly re-processed) version of Upper Yosemite Falls. (See the original story for info about making the image.) I enlarged this portion of the photo to focus on what matters: the first light of dawn on the cliffs and water.

Briefly noted: This is the view from Tunnel View in six progressive captures, with the forest area that’s in shadow combined using Photomatix HDR and the sunnier sky and rock formations added using hand layer masking in Photoshop.

At Tunnel View there are almost always crowds and photographers. Except sometimes at night. Well, the view is worth it.

Walk a couple of hundred feet up the Inspiration Point trail, and the crowds are gone. Everything is serene and quiet again.