Last weekend I went to the beach with my family and we got incredibly lucky with the weather. This was one of my favorite shots from the trip and of course, I ran it through PhotoTools.

Original Photo

I started off with one of the Jack Davis effects, the Global Contrast Boost to increase the contrast of the photo. Next, I added the very popular Lord of the Rings effect by Kevin Kubota. No it doesn’t add any goblins or orcs to the image, but rather gives a bit of that dreamy, punchy color look from the Lord of the Rings movies. I finished the preset off with an edge blur (reduced a bit) and the Edges to Black (Large) effect. Of course, if you only like part of the preset, you can remove the edge treatments if you don’t like them. The effect with just the Global Contrast and the Lord of the Rings works just fine by itself if that is more to your liking.