Atherton & District Amateur Photographic Society

Taking up the suggestion from Paul, I'm submitting this image for ADAPS members to have a go at editing. The sky is washed out, so I'd like to know how to put some blue/clouds in, and to get richer colours in the image. Maybe monochrome treatment would enhance the image and "take it back in time"?

I'd appreciate you listing the steps that you have used, since this will be a learning exercise for me.

Cheers

Mel

Nothing too drastic. I started by removing the red cones, simply copying and pasting another bit of wall over them. I adjusted the brightness so it matched better. So, rectangular selction, Ctrl + J to make the selection a new layer, move tool to move it and then Transform to scale it. Next was the decision to make it a toned image. Hue/Saturation with the colourise button selected. Hue around 25, saturation reduced to make the tone as desired. Then a crop followed by sharpening. Finally, a white key line around the image.

I like that photo and if I'd had the skill to take it I'd have gone for a vintage washed out feel

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/7505/cp87.png

I duplicated image twice in CC so I had 2 layers
converted the bottom layer to mono and really really sharpened it to bring out the texture in the planks and the detail of the bridgework
new layer, used filter - render - clouds with ffffff and dbfaff
lassoed, feathered and deleted the sky section on the colour layer,
moved it over the cloud layer and merged it down
then reduced the opacity of the colour layer to 30% luminosity

I really like the 'antique' look you have given to this image John, it's exactly what I had in mind. I'm not sure why the transform tool was needed, so I'll have a chat to you about that at the club.

ajs (sorry, I don't know who you are, so I'll have to use your initials until I find out): the effect that your work has produced on the metal of the bridge is very artistic - it has brought out the detail and makes the bridge look as though it has been recently sandblasted and sprayed silver. I'm impressed, and will try that technique on some of my other photos.

Cheers

Mel

melbarnes wrote: The sky is washed out, so I'd like to know how to put some blue/clouds in, and to get richer colours in the image....

Hi Mel - just a question: did you shoot this in RAW or jpeg?

If RAW it would be an easier process to bring out more blue sky.

Hi Paul

I shot it in jpeg. I've only just started to use RAW (+jpeg), but find that I can't get the Photoshop RAW plug-in to work for my camera, so I'll have to stick with jpeg for the time being (even though I've shot a lot in RAW only today!

Cheers

Mel

I've got a thing about old postcards at the minute, and this image seemed to fit, so -

Got rid of the cones using content aware fill and patch.
Tonal contrast filter layer - Nik Colorefex pro.
Blue solid colour layer - set blending mode to exclusion and drop to about 40% - this gives that nice faded photo look.
Dropped a texture on top, set blend mode to overlay and lowered opacity to 70%
Added text. This took the longest, as I was trying to find a font that fit. I wanted one of those scrawly handwriting ones but couldn't find anything suitable - my own is TOO scrawly
Lowered opacity on text layer to 70%.

Hi Kevin

I love the text that you added, but what text did you select in photoshop??

Cheers

Mel

Hi Mel,

that font is called 'Thirty Days of Victory'. There are lots of free fonts available online, I tend to use a site called Dafont.com.

Kevin.

I didn't want to move too far away from the original colour image - just to enhance what was already there.

This is a very quick edit (less than 5 minutes). Steps involved included:

- clone out red cones
- use gradient map adjustment layer to add more blue to the sky
- add more saturation, in particular to bring out the reds of the building and bridge
- add more contrast
- slight crop to take out building roof on left hand side

Hi Paul

I like the way you've done the graduated sky. I'll ask you to tell me how you did this when we meet on Sunday.

Cheers

Mel