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Opinion & advice please


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sirpsycho

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Hi,

I've been following this forum for a good while now and i've picked up lots of valuable tips, however lately I havent had as much time. i'm back into taking snaps now and i'm addicted again! I went out for a long walk along our coastline last saturday and took a ton of pictures. some of them turned out really nice despite the foggy weather. I took this picture on the way back from the walk but even though the fog had cleared considerably, I was still unable to get a good picture of this monastery. bear in mind I only have a 2M camera, but i'm still confident that it can take decent snaps and i can improve this pic in photoshop. can someone give me some advice/suggestions on what I should do to improve the pic in photoshop?? many thanks, looking forward to the replys.

S~P.

edit: Sorry, the pic was too big for the forum so I've included a link to it.

http://www25.brinkster.com/funkyflea1/bremorecastle.jpg
 
Hi sirpsycho,

Unfortunately when I tried to access your picture I got the following...
"This file cannot be directly accessed from a remote site, but must be linked through the Brinkster Member's site."
 
Obviously, the scaffoldings are part of the composition... I'd try to fix the sky: select the castle and the grond to Jump it to a new layer (CTRL+J) in order to replace the sky with an unburned one form another picture (make sure to select one that matches the current lighting conditions) Some tweakings with adjustment layers might give you grass closer to what you saw over there, if it is not the case.
 
sirpsycho,

I saw two possibilities in your picture. One was to try and adjust the image as it was. I used Levels, sliding the black slider just a bit until it hit the bump of the histogram. Then I used the Shadow/Highlight adjustment and blurred the bit of posterization which I created between the blue of the sky and the fog. My second attempt was to fake a sky. Selection was tricky and the sky itself was generated with a plugin, Digital Element's Aurora.
 
Wooo! Really nice Welles, I'm very impressed :) When I get home I'll try out what you were talking about and post my results. Thanx again.
 
In addition to what Welles did, sirpsycho, you can knockout the original sky completely and put in a real sky from another image.
 
Wow Lee and Welles. Thats some impressive stuff. I love the light streaks in the final Pic Lee. Very impressive stuff. Im a friend of Sir Psycho, so I joined up when he sent me on the link.

I have a 4mp camera but am only recently into using PS to touch up images etc. Heres some links to some photos I have taken recently. I'd love your feedback, or just to see any changes you could make to them to improve them. I think its amazing what can be done. Thanks guys.

I'll post the link in just a second...
 
Lee,

:bustagut: You put that building right in Orc territory!

mcgon1979,

First of all, welcome to the forum! Your photos are great! I particularly like the close-ups. Such detail! I'd suggest that if you want to play around with changing colors of the flowers, you first work on a copy of the file, select the flower and then try Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation... ( or Selective Color... or Replace Color... ) Each of those adjustments accomplishes an aspect of color change in a different manner. On the ocean pictures you might try Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight... to add a bit of drama. If you aren't familiar with creating selections, here is a good starting tutorial.

http://www.photoshopgurus.info/beginners/learning_fundamentals/selection-tools.shtml

Just for fun, I took one of your flower images, selected the flower using the Magnetic Lasso mostly, and threw away the pot and soil. ;)

I then created a quick desktop image wallpaper and a 'miniature' for posting here. Here's a link to the 1024 X 768 version.

http://www.homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/FlowerDesktop1024.jpg

Tomorrow I'll take a closer look at the moon picture as that one is a challenge for me to figure out what to do with it.

Cheers!
Welles
 
Lee,

Thanx for that image :righton: I can't believe ye can come up with these images so fast, it would take me ages!

Can I ask you how you created that image? Is it a case of taking the previous sky out and creating a new layer with the new sky then blending them together while erasing the parts you dont want to appear?
 
hey Welles,

That flower pic is brilliant! I love the backrounds. No idea how to create those kind of backrounds yet. I've used the clone tool abit in the past touching up photos and have used selection a small bit when changing the colour of a car but not the backround. I was semi-successful [oops] Please Please do take a look at the moon pic. I think it has potential to be a good 1024x768 backround image with the right 'drama/mood/ambience' alterations. I'd love to see anything you come up with. I haven't messed around with any of them yet because I don't ahve photoshop at work, only at home, and presently all my time on the computers is at work. I'll get around to it soon. but please do try something with the moon pic. Its my favourite one cause the lighthouse flash is in it too and it loks good, just needs to eb 'worked' on to get the max out of it.

thanks guys.

:}
 
sirp,
I used a plug-in called Knockout 2. It works MUCH better than Photoshops Extract tool. The website link is here. http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel2/Products/Home&pid=1047022702205

In short, all you do is knock out the original sky and drag a new sky image onto your working image. Make sure the two images are the same size (meaning dpi and dimensions etc). Use the Levels, Curves and/or Contrast tools to match the two images as closely as possible. Then move the sky down behind the foreground layer, move it around (using move tool) to fit the original picture, flatten image and your done. :righton:
 
mcgon1979,

I had at the moon image. Unfortunately, you can't really see the results in this smaller version but you could trace my steps if you feel like it. What I was striving for was to modify the noise which was particularly noticeable in the sky. Any modification like this is always a compromise and I was pretty happy with my result. The technique was pretty simple. I opened a copy of the image (always work on a copy). Duplicate the background by dragging the Background layer onto the new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Run Filter > Noise > Median... on the new layer which evens out the noise but blurs the heck out of the image. Change the blend mode of the filtered layer to Lighten. (That's done in the Layers Palette at the top left in the drop down menu which defaults to Normal.)

Well that was it. Some of the detail of the wave/moon interaction is softened but it makes the whole image quite a bit less noisy. It could be easily be obtained again by applying a layer mask to the Median... manipulated layer and hiding that layer in the area of the moonlight on the waves by painting black with a soft brush on that area of the image when the layer mask was active.

I hope other forum members who are more skilled at photographic manipulation than I will pitch in with their suggestions.

Cheers!
Welles
 
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