Color correcting the Boone & Crockett knife

The Boone & Crockett knife is made from the burlwood of California Buckeye, which grows along the Sacramento River valley, up through the redwood forests of northern California. The pins are aluminum, which complements the mirror polished finish to the blade. The sheath is dyed, full grain, tooling grade cow leather.

Photographing highly reflective objects like mirrors and buffed wood requires some definite attention to detail. The blade was nearly pure white in the original photo, so I selected the blade and added a masked gradient fill in the direction of the edge. The background was made white with Levels, which red-shifted the colors, including the shadow. Making the shadow greyscale was easy enough, by selecting it and adding the B/W filter, and the rest of the knife was color corrected with a Hue/Saturation filter.

A finished knife like this sells for $90. The published illustration is here: http://www.texasknife.com/vcom/product_info.php?products_id=809