Infinity Light Fun!
The beautiful colored “Infinity Lights” were on display at the local St. Augustine Outlet Mall in Florida. You can actually check them out at Facebook@Happy Pappys Glowing Balls. They are quite striking at night!
This was really easy to process – actually took the image with my little point and shoot camera. Just did regular adjustments in Lightroom before going into Photoshop. First Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Detail 3 was used – applied Overall Detail Medium II with a Lt. Blue Sky Tone filter selected. (Did you know that Detail now has filters for each section? If you click on the upper right corner of each section, there is a drop-down with all kinds of presets for all the sections. For example, the Tone section has presets for Lt. Blue Sky, Lt. Contrast, Lt. Foliage, Dk. Bl. Sky, Dk. Foliage, Brighter I and II, Darker I and II, Med Contrast, High Contrast, and Skin Brightening I and II. This was added to their recent 3.1 upgrade – definitely download this if you have the plug-in and did not do this.) A New Layer was created and a stop sign removed in the background. A composite of the image was created (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) was placed on top and a Gaussian Blur filter set to a Radius of 22 applied. A black layer mask was added and the background area was painted in white to keep the blur in those areas. The last step involved adding OnOne’s (see sidebar for website link) Perfect Effects 4 PhotoTone Cooler preset was applied, which added a little bit of a bluish tone to the total image. This preset was part of free download from OnOne if you own Perfect Effects 4 – they are from their original PhotoTunes program from many years ago. The last step involved adding my free SJ Thin Double Edged Frame with colors from image. I wish I had a good place to put a few of these really interesting lights. They are so pretty!…..Digital Lady Syd
What a Cute Little Alligator!
Thought I would post my wonderful recent golf experience – we were almost done playing – hole 18 – and then I shot the ball in the water. (That’s how good I am!) Almost clobbered this little sunning alligator, but he did not even move when we pulled the ball out of the water. First alligator I have seen this year, and I would not have gotten the shot if I did not have my cheap Kodak point-and-shoot camera. The image was processed very simply. First I used a Lightroom preset created a while back from a video called True Grit by Michael Rather. (Since I keep referencing it, here are the settings from the short video: Basic Panel – Contrast +100, Highlights -80, Shadows +100, Whites and Blacks sliders to taste, Clarity +100, Vibrance -82, and Saturation -7; and Lens Correction Panel – in Manual tab set Lens Vignetting Amount to -76 and the Midpoint to +19. Use these settings as a starting point and adjust them to taste. My preset actually is set to Clarity of +67 and Vibrance of -82 and were used in the image above.) Next my favorite sharpening plug-in, Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Detail 3, was applied using the Soft and Dreamy II preset. In the Effect Mask section, the effect was removed from the alligator using the brush strength set to 1.00 and partially on the golf clubs and cart canvas top using a o.21 brush strength. The Overall Opacity was set to 0.87. Back in Photoshop a Levels Adjustment Layer was added setting the middle tab to 0.86. Next a Darken/Lighten layer was created (see my Best Dodging and Burning Technique! blog for info on how to do this). The last step involved adding my free SJ B&W Border Frame Layer Style – changed the black color to a sampled green color from the image. It was great to get outside after a pretty cold and ugly winter/early spring and it was fun to see this little guy, even though he was a little scary. …..Digital Lady Syd
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Taken the morning after Hurricane Sandy went past Ormond Beach in Florida, this image showed how strong the surf was and how gray the sky appeared even though the ferocious hurricane was not a direct hit. We were so fortunate that the storm did not hit Florida directly.
What I really like about the shot is how sharp the texture in the waves and beach surf is. To get this effect, the image was first processed in Lightroom where just basic slider corrections were made and a custom crop was created. I usually do not do this, but this image seemed to scream panorama to me as the sky was so plain and the main subject is the large expanse of water. Since everything was moving, a several shot panorama was out of the question, so it had to be faked. Click on image to see Lightroom version – it is very flat, not at all how I remember it. In Nik Color Efex Pro 4, a Cross Processing filter using Method C04 at 27% strength, Detail Extractor filter set to Normal (Detail Extractor at 64%, Contrast at 31%, and Saturation at16%) with 6 Control Points to restrict the filter effect to the sky area, and a Lens Vignette filter (Amount -9, toward Rectangle,Size 57% and Brightness -16%). In Nik Viveza 2 the Center was brightened. The Spot Healing Brush was used on a clean up layer, and Contrast was boosted with a Curves Adjustment Layer. The default preset in Imagenomics Noiseware was applied. When noiseware is applied, the image detail will usually get softer – therefore, in a white layer mask, I painted with a soft black brush the waves back so you can see the water mist detail. The last step was to apply my free SJ Thin Double Edge Frame layer style sampling colors from the image. Now I get the result I remember!…..Digital Lady Syd
Yellow Dogface Butterfly in her Glory!
This Southern Dogface Butterflies (named for their heads that look like French poodles) visited my purple pentas this fall. They are very skiddish butterflies and are hard to photograph. I used my 60 mm Nikon Macro Lens to catch the shot at F/3.2, 1/2000, and ISO 200. The image was processed first in Lightroom 4 using the workflow from my How to Use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) or Lightroom 4 Quickly blog. To create the soft effect, Nik Color Efex Pro 4 was applied with several filters stacked: Midnight using Neutral Color Set, Glamour Glow with Glow set to 90%, Vignette, and Film Efex Vintage set to Film Type 2 and an Overall Opacity of 40%. The Sharpen Tool was applied to the face. Nik Viveza 2 was applied to soften the bright tones in the background and to sharpen the head a little more. My Mid Size Double Edged Frame was added to the image to finish up. I really enjoyed working on this image – it has a different feel to what I normally do……Digital Lady Syd
Just Bloomin’ Beautiful!
This miniature mum was in bloom again for the fall season. Just beautiful! This image was taken with my Micro Nikkor 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens set to Manual mode, 1/90 sec, F/5.6 and ISO 200. Very little processing but did use Flypaper Texture Rainbow Trout Taster and my Double Edge Frame Layer Style sampling the Inner Shadow color from the image. Enjoy!…..Digital Lady Syd
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Spotlight on the Pink Spica!
Just another example of the wonderful Camera Raw sliders now updated with Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4. This beautiful pink spica was taken at the Hawaii Botanical Tropical Garden and was first processed in Lightroom 4 by following Scott Kelby’s workflow in my How to Use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) or Lightroom 4 Quickly blog. The White Balance was left as shot, Exposure set to -0.10, Contrast +24, Highlights -100, Shadows +100, Whites +10, Black -6, and no Clarity or Vibrance were used. The Green slider was set to -30 in the HSL Saturation section to reduce the color just a little. Noise reduction Luminance was set to 22, the Lens Correction profile was set to my camera lens, and in Effects a Highlight Priority Style Post-Crop Vignetting Amount set to -41.
In Photoshop a lot of clean up was done on the leaves – they had spots everywhere but the Spot Healing Brush worked wonders on most of it – just set to Content Aware in the Options Bar and swipe away. Scott’s Highlight Effect was applied to spotlight the flower (duplicate the layer and set it to Multiply blend mode, then add a layer mask and paint back in your object with a big soft black brush). Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Simplify 4’s Watercolor II preset was applied to soften the flower a little. A black layer mask was added and the flower was painted back with a low opacity brush in white to give just a hint of the painterly look. My Thin Double Edge Frame layer style was applied with colors sampled from the image. Very quick and very easy. Love the final look…..Digital Lady Syd
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Digital Lady Syd’s Free Layer Style Frames
To download the free layer style frame above, a thinner version of it, and a nice black and white double edged frame, go to my Deviant Art site and click on the SJ Double Edge Frame Styles Download File button in upper right corner. To load into Photoshop, the Style Panel needs to be open (Windows -> Styles) – click on the upper right corner icon on panel to open pop-out menu and select Load Styles – navigate to folder where the file was downloaded and click Load. (To add them to listed styles in pop-out, load the style manually. If using Windows 7, go to Local C Drive/Users/user name/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS6/Presets/Styles and move downloaded .asl file here – this adds file to Photoshop internal settings.) When using these styles, be sure the top layer is a complete layer (see Step 1 below) or it will not apply correctly.
TIP: If you want to use the colors from your image, just double click on the effect in the Layers Panel which brings up the dialog box for that effect. Click on the color swatch in the effect and when the Color Picker opens, sample image using the eyedropper that appears when hovering in your image – click to add that color into the frame. For the Inner Shadow effect, if you are not seeing any color update when sampling, change the Blend Mode to Normal from Multiply. Note that the next time you use the Layer Style, it will return to whatever colors you set originally, so save it as a New Layer Style if you want to keep the new color settings (see Step 5 below). Sampling colors from the image can often frame it beautifully!
Below are the steps on how to create my layer styles. I am using the frame colors seen above as they seem to look nice on many of my images.
1. Need to have an image layer on top for the layer style to work correctly. To do this, highlight the top layer in the Layers Panel and press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E to create a layer that combines all the active layers (eyeballs showing on left edge) in the image. Need to remember this shortcut as it is very useful when doing a lot of things in Photoshop!
2. Double-click on the top layer and the Blending Options dialog box appears. Be sure Blending Options: Default is highlighted on left side.
3. Check and click on Inner Shadow effect and change just these settings: Blend Mode to Multiply, Color Swatch set to brownish color (R165/G120/B0), Opacity 100, Distance 0, Choke 83, and Size 15 pixels.
4. Check and click on Inner Glow effect and change just these settings: Blend Mode Normal, Opacity 100, Color Swatch to greenish color (R115/G121/B42), Technique Softer, Source Edge, Choke 90%, and Size 19 pixels.
5. To save these settings as a Layer Style preset for using on other images, click the New Style button and name it and leave checked Include Layer Effects. Now click on Styles at top left in dialog box or open the Style Panel (Window -> Styles), and it will appear at bottom of the listed styles.
To create the little thinner frame around your image, in Step 3 set Size to 21 and in Step 4 set Size to 29. (For example, see my blog 32-Bit HDR Using Lightroom and CS6.) To create a nice Black and White framing, set Inner Shadow to Normal Blend Mode and Color Swatch to Black – still using Size 51 pixels, and Inner Glow to a White Color Swatch and Size 62 pixels. Of course you can adjust the sizes to look good on your image if they need it. If you do not like the way the style looks after applying, just CTRL+Z to delete and try another one. Try adjusting all the sliders and seeing if you can get an even nicer look.
This image of my pretty little purple Agapanthus bloom was processed using Nik Color Efex Pro 4 – BiColor User Defined filter set to white and light pink colors, Darken/Lighten Center centered on the flower center, and Glamour Glow filters. Two textures were added using Dr. Brown’s Paper Texture Panel (see my blog Russell Brown’s Paper Texture Panel Updated!) and Flypaper’s Apple Blush taster texture using Linear Light at 39% opacity and Creme Anglaise taster texture set to Overlay at 100 opacity. The last step was clicking on my SJ Double Edge Frame layer style in Styles Panel to apply.
Try using these layer styles – I think you will like them. The framing gives a clean sharp edge to an image, especially for posting on the internet……Digital Lady Syd
