The canals of Amsterdam have a certain serenity at any hour, but there is nothing like strolling along them in the quiet early morning hours. After days of exploring and a few failed attempts to capture the beauty of Amsterdam, I found the composition I was after and perfect conditions. Just as the sky began to light up with beautiful clouds, the wind calmed for just a few seconds for me to capture the mirror-like reflection of these gorgeous old buildings. It was just a moment. Out of dozens of frames, only these four seconds had both the clouds and water I was seeking – but it was all I needed in the RAW image.

In the tutorial below, you’ll learn the complete complete post-processing workflow I used to finish the image. You’ll see the RAW processing in Lightroom and luminosity masking and other final edits in Photoshop and Lumenzia.

 

 

Here’s the original RAW:

 

And the finished image: