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Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject: Photochop of the Month!
Each month we will add a picture for people to apply their photoshop skills to. Your post must include details on what you have done to the photo so other members can learn from this. We will welcome discussion / comments after your posts.
If you feel you have a suitable picture you would like to put forward for Photochop then email it to me.
I'll start with:
Its a shot i have taken many times, but can never get it to look anything like. So i will be interested to see what people can come up with. _________________
This is my first pop at this picture. Landscapes often come out rather flat and one of my favourite treatments is a very stylised look. I used Elements4 so all this is available in Photoshop. First check is levels to make sure the whole range from white to black is in, it needed a little adjustment at both ends.
Next I inverted the picture (Filter > adjustments > Invert), and applied a Diffuse glow (Filter > Distort > Diffuse Glow) Grain = 0, Glow Amount = 3, Clear Amount = 15. I use those settings a lot. Invert again.
I used the dodge and burn tools, 3% Exposure, to dodge the highlights and midtones in the foreground water and the trees where they needed it, and burnt the shadows on the midground Willows and a little on the water.
Lastly I added a small bit of cloud. Adjusted to match sky colours near as poss. Took out any blue sky around the cloud with magic wand and a feather of 5. Switched off the main image layer and erased any bits I didn't want around the cloud. Blended the cloud using screen blend in the layers palette.
adjusted levels, brought in at both ends
shadows and highlights adjsuted , shadows set at 6%, tonal 50 and radius 30
highlights at 40%, tonal at 50 rad at 30
Clour correction at +20
select - colour range, and clicked on the sky
Filter - render- lighting effect , rotated slightly to get light on upper right
Then copied and pasted the heron - not best cut, but was in rush
Wow guys, looks like I've got a lot to learn with photoshop.
Don't know how long each edit took but what a difference. You've both taken a flat and dull picture and given it a whole new lease of life.
Great stuff.
I'm going to really enjoy this post, its going to give me some great tips on what to try. _________________
This is brilliant because I never think about doing more than one or two chops on a picture and now that this is here I just want to see what I can do. _________________
I chose a sunset sky to work with and pasted that as the background layer with Mikes picture as a second layer. I used the magic wand to get rid of as much sky as I could, then used the eraser and clone tools to try to make the trees as realistic as possible. I took a fair amount out. Using the layers palette I used the red layer to increase red and the blue layer to increase yellow until I was happy with the colour match with the sky. I selected all the water and feathered to 20px and used the layers palette to darken the midtones. I used the dodge and burn tools pretty much the same as on the last one on the water and willows. I flattened the image and did the invert, diffuse glow, invert as last time.
Just generous with the truth perhaps? I tried to steal a leaf out of your book and put a seagull in but couldn't get the colour right. Might have another go. _________________
Creators you have far to much time on your hands, nice job with the sunset one though, looks like the trees have been lite from the front. love it. _________________ The sun cannot set,
Because you are not here,
To see it,
The day cannot end,
It can't be right,
That night will come,
Without you.
Erm, I am a teacher, as it happens, though as a DipEd, I confess that removal of the 'p', by some parties, and inserting 'ck' is unkindly done. Any Harrisons on these boards would wisely remain silent at this juncture. _________________
yeah right, as if, time for the truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuth
mike's right though creators, you should teach people, or at least do a step by step write up guide for us mere mortals an get mike to put it as a sticky!!!
Simon... _________________ The sun cannot set,
Because you are not here,
To see it,
The day cannot end,
It can't be right,
That night will come,
Without you.
yeah right, as if, time for the truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuth
Simon...
I knew I should have put, 'Be nice, children!' at the bottom of my last post.
Simonzphotoz wrote:
mike's right though creators, you should teach people, or at least do a step by step write up guide for us mere mortals an get mike to put it as a sticky!!!
Simon...
On what though? This thread is hopefully going to raise many of the issues we all come across and will also hopefully open up the space for some guides. It's also easy to get bogged down with doing a whole picture, and all the confusing steps taken, when the thing one may be stumbling over may be, for example, how to use the levels palette. But immediately that raises another issue, the use of layers and adjustment layers. There are literally a zillion ways to mess with pictures, which are, in part, down to developed personal preferences. See how it goes? _________________
yeah suppose, just thinking that you do so much stuff then maybe you could do a step by step on the next simple one you do, like that sunset one, I wouldn't even know where to begin?? _________________ The sun cannot set,
Because you are not here,
To see it,
The day cannot end,
It can't be right,
That night will come,
Without you.
I don't know if this will work or be helpful, but this is the progression I used to make a rather extreme sunset.
I opened a new 600 x 400 image. I then chose the background sunset image I wanted and resized it (1000 x 665 from a 3008 x 2000), roughly what I thought I would need for the 600 x 400 image we're working with. I pasted that in and pasted Mikes image on top of that. So three layers, background blank, sunset and Mikes image on top.
Using the magic wand I held down the shift key and chose as much of the sky as I could easily and deleted it and was left with this:
Making sure Mikes image layer (Top layer) was selected I added a new adjustment layer from the layer palette...
and only using the middle slider made the following adjustments:
Note - Red Channel:
Note - Blue Channel:
Note - RGB:
I clicked back onto Mikes image and using the eraser tool set to 4 pixels and the clone stamp tool set to 4 pixels I began removing any sky pixels I didn't want by erasing and/or adding.
Note - Set the sampling point for the clone stamp tool by holding down ALT and left clicking the area you want to clone from. I constantly change the sampling point as I work.
After I had removed all the sky that looked wrong, I switched off the Ajustment Layer and this is what the image looked like, to give you some idea how much could be left alone.
The great thing about adjustment layers is you can switch them off to see where you've come from and adjust them by double clicking the little white square.
I switched the adjustment layer back on and using the dodge and burn tools set to 3% Exposure I darkened (burned) shadows on the willows and water and lightened (dodged) the midtones and highlights on the same areas. Which looked like this, pretty much a finished image.
For a bit of overkill though, this is what it looks like after inverting the image, applying Diffuse glow and inverting back.
Whoops, I've lost an image (wrong delete, poo!), I clone stamped in the sun over the main water reflection, 21% opacity and click 'sample all layers' to sample from the sun.
wicked keef, just what I meant.
whats next?? _________________ The sun cannot set,
Because you are not here,
To see it,
The day cannot end,
It can't be right,
That night will come,
Without you.
Coloured version was similar to Creators, added sky, adjusted levels, dodge and burn a bit,
B & W - used image/adjustments/channel mixer
select the monochrome button, and adjust sliders to get b&w effect you like, essentially red up around 70 to 100, others to suit your taste (I am told that its best to have the percentages for each colour adding to 100 but again I think its personall preference)
Mist added as follows
Got the picture as I wanted it, flattened the image then
added an adjustment layer (brightness and contrast one)
brightness set to +30
contrast to -30
used a large size soft edge brush
made sure opacity was at 100%
and then painted over the foreground making a mask (that is revealing the areas of no mist)
repeated adjustment layer step as necessary - think I did it twice.
I'm sure there are variations to these settings that will give better results, trial and error, and its fun trying.
You've also achieved a much better rendering of the tree line than I've managed so far, any tricks or tips? I always struggle with trees when adding a sky. _________________
Thanks for comment on the rendering. Just in case anyone else is reading will start at beginning
For pictures like this one, have found that using selection by colour range is better, so using original pic as example, and open in PS
Select/color range
brings up dialogue box, so click on any part of the sky, you will find in this picture all the sky will be selected, as no great colour variation, but also there will be some stray pixels selected elswhere, no great problem within the trees as this is sky anyway and you are going to replace it, but there is an area in the water, that would be difficult to clone out, so ended up cancelling, and deselecting.
Open layers pallete
Double clicked on the background layer, so now got layer 0
Now did a selection using the rectangular marquee tool (made it easier to place the copy now to be made) that took in the area of water that was going to be affected, right clicked over the selected area, and copy by layer.
now got 2 layers, put new layer below layer 0, select this new layer, use the move tool to place in the correct position
Now select layer 0, and select/colour range and click on the sky, press delete.
Sky should now be blank, and the water not affected as it new layer should be "showing through".
Then flatten layer - layer/flatten
Now go to town on changing the picture.
Hope that all made sense.
Anyway after all that, it didn't matter on my second image, as the mist covered the area. (before anybody else says it - I did spot it)
This was quite a quick chop just to produce a night scene. I used a previous image where I'd already taken out the sky, so haven't tried to make the tree line more realistic, which I should have done.
I altered the midtones of the main image using the levels palette and burnt back the highlights and midtones in the trees. Selected and feathered the reflection area in the water and cloned in some moonlight. Lastly I dodged the highlights and midtones around the water reflection and that was it.
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