Brandymore Castle

An popular effect is the HDR, gritty, "chrome" look. After watching a video on the technique , I thought I'd give it a try in LightZone. This look is achieved without actual HDR, but by contrast, local contrast and saturation adjustments. The steps in LightZone involve dropping a number of tools on the stack and adjusting them, which is a different approach than Photoshop or Lightroom. Drop a Hue/Saturation tool. Set Vibrance to 100. Drop a Sharpen tool. Set Amount to 500 and Radius to 50, adjust until you get a "comic book" or "chrome" look (strong blacks, faded, three-dimensional pastel colors). Drop a Zone Mapper tool. Define points at 2 steps down from white, 5 steps down from white and 4 or 5 steps up from black. Push the white point up to where it divides the top step in two, leave the middle point alone, pull the black point all the way done to keep contrast. Later, you can adjust the middle tone contrast by adjusting the middle point. Drop anot...