A Rose Hanging In There
This once beautiful rose was trying its best to show pretty even though its outer ring of leaves were pretty much spent. I decided to paint it since it had some pretty leaves and nice central rosebud. Several painting layers were created using Photoshop’s Legacy Brush called the Fan Flat Blender. I created a couple variants so color could be added easily, but it is pretty much the same brush. What is so nice is that it has a texture in the brush which adds a great effect to the mixer brush. Also Color Efex Pro 4 was added using the Darken/Lighten Center, Film Efex Vintage, and Detail Extractor filters. In PS On1’s Moody 5 Color Lookup preset was added at 61% layer opacity. And the last step was to use Viveza 2 to emphasize the center of the flower and give a slight vignette effect…..Digital Lady Syd
Problems for Big Ben
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It is funny that I had just completed this image of Big Ben a few days ago and then it comes out that is has some tilting issues, 0.26 degrees NW or 18 inches off center at the top of the 314-foot tower. It will be thousands of years before Britain’s iconic landmark that houses the clock gets as bad as the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. The rumor is Members of Parliament are meeting to discuss what to do including these two options: 1) Do costly repairs to both the Parliament Building and Big Ben, or 2) sell the entire complex to a rich foreign developer. Hum! For more information on this, check out The National Post article.
I tried to find an old famous painting of Big Ben but could not find one – can’t believe no one painted this gorgeous landmark in the 1800’s so my search is still on. In the meantime, I did find a site selling some very interesting Big Ben posters at Art.Com that I found very inspirational – give it a look to see some of the creative work others are doing (and for profit!).
How I processed this image? Believe it or not, this is just another pseudo HDR processed just like I do all my pseudo HDR’s. Used my SJ-Vivid Drawing Look preset in Lightroom 3 (download here if using Adobe Camera Raw) (note: change file extension to .xmp in zip folder to get file to work) and adjusted the Exposure, Blacks, Red Saturation (-45), Blue Saturation (+61), and Green Luminance (+3) sliders to make the image colors pop correctly. In fact the red bus was overpowering the image so the red saturation had to be reduced quite a bit. (Hover over image to see how it looked coming out of Lightroom.) I must say there was an amazing sky that day! Some clean up in Photoshop was done and the image was taken into Nik Color Efex Pro 4. All I did was add the SJ Pseudo HDR1 recipe (NOTE: This download link is broken if you click the Download button, but by right clicking on the button and choosing “Save Link As,” the file will download correctly.”) – I had to tone down the Detail Extractor and Contrast a little and change the Effect Radius to Large to get rid of the over-exaggerated HDR look. In Nik’s Viveza 2 I added a point on the clockface to make it really sharp but this could easily have been done with the Sharpen Tool in Photoshop. The last step was to add a Curves Adjustment Layer to brighten the whole image just a little. I was surprised how much detail came in from only applying the Lightroom preset without the Photoshop plug-ins. You could actually see the people riding inside the bus! It’s great when it all comes together with the light and composition to create a great shot!…..Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:
Pseudo HDR Using NIK Color Efex Pro 4
Another Pseudo HDR Image with NIK CEP4 – Got to Love the Effect!
Where Am I?
Elements or CS5: Stacking the Same Image for Effect
This image was created in Photoshop Elements 10 – it is of an old abandoned gas station not too far from the airport in Jackson, Mississippi. I am still figuring out this program so this was definitely just playing around and getting used to what the program can do. To create this optical illusion, follow these steps.
1. Open up image into Elements (or CS) and duplicate the layer (click OK in the dialog that opens).
2. In this case the top layer was taken into Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and an HDR preset was added to create the HDR effect. (If you have the plug-in or are using it as a trial version, my blog “Settings for Vivid Drawing Look ACR/Lightroom Preset and NIK Color Efex Pro 4 Pseudo HDR Recipe” has the preset settings you can enter manually or download already as a preset.) Any effect can be applied here.
3. After coming back into Elements (or CS), add a Layer Style was added – used an inner Glow using the default color at 114 pixels and opacity at 75%, and a black Stroke set to 18 pixels at 100% opacity. At this point the image can be transformed and rotated like the image above.
4. Next the bottom layer was highlighted and a New Layer was added below (ALT+click on the New Layer Icon) and filled with a beige color (CTRL+Backspace).
5. Set the image layer to Multiply blend mode at 88% opacity to make the bottom image much softer.
6. Go to the Adjustment Layers (third icon at bottom of Layers Palette) and select Gradient Map – the Light Brown gradient was chosen and the Layer was set to Soft Light blend mode to make image even softer.
7. Finally add a Levels Adjustment Layer to bring back a little contrast of the whole image.
8. The Sharpen Tool or Unsharp Mask filter can be added at this point if you want to sharpen the top layer image but since the Pseudo HDR preset was applied in NIK, it oversharpened the above image.
9. I created a Text Layer with my name and the copyright symbol was added using the Custom Shape Tool.
I was really pleased with the results and it gives an interesting effect. Try experimenting with the different layer combinations and see what you can get. It could turn out to be unexpectedly interesting!…..Digital Lady Syd
