The Chocolate Shop

Had fun post-processing this image from Kilwin’s Chocolate Shop in St. Augustine, Florida – excellent chocolate! This image was pretty tricky to do as that little train was moving all over the place and it was in front of the food sign to make it even harder. It really helped to have Topaz Sharpen AI (see sidebar for website link) on this one – use it as a first step almost on every RAW image. The biggest problem was all the spectral reflections on the sign – totally blocked out some of the lettering. Therefore, a lot of clone stamping and painting was done on this image. For cloning, a brush from PS Guru Aaron Nace that is just a 30-pixel round brush set to 25% Spacing and 28% Hardness – the Options Bar was set to 100% Opacity and 80% Flow, Aligned checked and Sample Current & Below. It does a pretty good of job but is a little choppy looking where the strokes stop. To fix that, another clone brush was used – one I call Soft Build up Clone by Pratik Naik, a famous retoucher. It is a very simple brush too – Size 100 pixels, Spacing and Hardness 25% and Build-up checked in the Brush Settings Panel. In the Options Bar, the brush has an Opacity 100% and a Flow of 9% – be sure to turn on the Airbrush – also turn on Aligned and Sample Current & Below. If this does not smooth out the lines enough, just increase the Flow a little. This brush is really fabulous! Just cloned over other lettering to reconstruct the bad letters. Also used Kyle’s Drawing Box-Glide Sketch Pencil/14% (for smoothing) Sm brush and my SJ Pastel3-Painting brush (all over my blogs if you want the settings) for clean up. The font is one I really like – Onamura Thin. That was about it – took some time but overall a good final result!…..Digital Lady Syd