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The Old 1929 Ford Model A Car

Image of an old 1929 Ford Model A car in front of the Cordova (Casa Monica) Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida

Just posting a quick blog of an antique car that is usually parked outside the Cordova Hotel (now the Casa Monica Hotel) cc 1888 in St. Augustine, Florida. Lots of fun adding an old feel to the image. After watching Unmesh Dinda’s video called 4 Luminar EXCLUSIVE Effects Photoshop Can’t Create!, I decided to use my similar image and try out the technique. From Lightroom Luminar 4 (see sidebar for website link) was opened and his steps were followed. The LUT used is from the Street Look set called 60’s B&W preset. In Photoshop used On1 (see sidebar for website link) as a plugin to add Cross Processing filter using Yellow Strong and Vintage filter using Earth – all filters were set to Opacity 59%. Now the image had a more yellow/green look so in PS a Color Adjustment Layer was added to get more of a dark purple and cyan feel. A Levels Adjustment Layer was used to adjust the overall brightness of the image. Last step was to add a subtle vignette. I love doing vintage look images. …..Digital Lady Syd

Painted Flowers

Digital painting of a wedding floral arrangment

Just had fun painting – I like to practice a bit each week so I do not forget how to do this. Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Sharpen AI was used to sharpen the image. Actually used a plugin I got recently, Perfectly Clear, to brighten up the image – just used Tone, Color and Preprocessing panels. Had to clean up a little and then put together several brushes in a group to use for painting -mainly mixers, blenders, and a couple regular brushes. A bevel and emboss layer style was added on top to get the canvas effect…..Digital Lady Syd

Beautiful Hawaii

Image at Ka Iwi Scenic Shoreline on Ohau, Hawaii

Just missing Hawaii. This image was taken at the Ka Iwi Scenic Shoreline in Oahu – great place to take pix. Just adjusted sliders in Lightroom – no presets or a local adjustments. A B&W Adjustment Layer, a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using my preset, a Red Channel Curves Adjustment Layer, Viveza 2 to direct focus, a Spotlight Effect layer, Topaz (see sidebar for website link) DeNoise AI at 0.47 was added and applied to just the sky with a layer mask, and finally a Vignette using the Levels Adjustment Layer. Pretty much my basic workflow. ….. Digital Lady Syd

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving wishes with yellow daisies

I still have a few yellow daisies blooming in my yard so they decided they would like their picture taken to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. What I like the most is the pretty font in this image – it is called Argentina Script. It lots of different Glyph settings to make your text look fancy. Also used Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Sharpen AI and Topaz Impression (for just the background – painted back the flowers), PS Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using Crisp Winter preset, a red Photo Filter set to 27% Density, and Nik Viveza. Great fun with this one!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving from Digital Lady Syd!

The Dome at Flagler College

Image of the Dome at Flagler College (the old Hotel Ponce de Leon) in St. Augustine, Florida

I have tried to post process this image before without a lot of success. That was until I ran across an older video by the Photoshop Guru Unmesh Dinda where he used Luminar 2018 on a very similar image. I could not believe how great the details came out so I thought I would share the technique. The video is called 4 Luminar EXCLUSIVE Effects Photoshop Can’t Create and the effect used here is called Image Radiance. The image was taken in St. Augustine at the main entrance to Flagler College, aka the old Hotel Ponce de Leon built in 1890 by Henry Flagler. The dome stands 3 stories high and is still quite spectacular. The effect can be done easily with Luminar (see sidebar for website link) Flex but is much harder with Luminar 4. Here are the filters and settings used for the above – you can see the issue with Luminar 4 not having all the filters/sliders: Dramatic: Amount 39, Contrast 95, Local Contrast 69, Brightness -88, and Sat -42; Highlights/Shadows: Highlights -80 and Shadows 63 (for Lum 4-look in Light filter for sliders); Sharpening: Amount 89, Radius 50, Masking 35, and Dehalo 50 (for Lum 4-look in Details Enhancer – all but the Dehalo sliders are found in Advanced Settings); Image Radiance Amount 14, Smoothness 100, Brightness 29, Shadows 79, Warmth 19, and Sat -70 (for Lum 4 there is a Glow setting but no Shadow or Saturation slider) ; Microstructure: Amount 90 and Softness 50 (for Lum 4 there is not Microstructure filter-possibly AI Structure would work); and added Details Enhancer: Small 41, Medium 35, and Large 21. I also used Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Sharpen AI at the start using the Stabilize mode, Remove Blur 0.90 and Suppress Noise 0.30 – the best sharpening filter around.

Hope this post helped you a little, especially if you are working with the new Luminar 4 – Luminar 3 did have all the filters and sliders still. Have a great day!…..Digital Lady Syd

First View of Land

Image of sailing across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas

This was a pretty exciting moment when land is first seen after sailing across the Gulf Stream all night. There was a sailboat off in the distance in this image, but we did not see another one until Spanish Cay – the ocean is very empty around here. To post process the image, very little was done. The water was adjusted in Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Studio 2 by adding a little bit of the Impression filter set to the default to tone down all the white reflection on the water – it was masked off the sky. This is exactly how the clouds looked – totally incredible. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer was added using the free SparkleStock’s Wedding LUT called Airy 01 set to 58% layer opacity. A Curves Adjustment Layer was added on top where the RGB curve was set to a little S curve for contrast and the Red Channel was used to lighten up the Cyan just a little. That was it. ….. Digital Lady Syd

Savannah Home

Just enjoyed painting an image I took quite a while ago in Savannah, Georgia. These type of homes are everywhere in the historic district. In Photoshop used the Fan-Flat Blender that Photoshop provides in their Legacy set. Also used a couple others to get the smooth effect I wanted on the steps. In Corel Painter, used one of the newer Thick Paint Brushes to add texture and lighting to the ferns which were quite flat in the original image. Then brought the image back into PS to finish up. Actually ended up using a really old Topaz (see sidebar for website link) program called photoFXLabs and the Instatone effect since I could not get an the correct palette for the image. It worked great!…..Digital Lady Syd

Bird of Paradise

Image of White Bird of Paradise plant blooms

This is a rather towering Bird of Paradise plant that grows by my garage and protects the house from intruders. Well, maybe not the intruder thing but it is pretty intimidating for a plant. I just had some fun trying out the new Photoshop 2020 Content-Aware Fill update that works incredibly well when the Custom mode is used. My house and other parts of the plant were around this part of the plant, and they were removed pretty quickly with the Custom mode and the paint brush where you paint over the part of the image you want your selection to use for the replacement. It is a little bit like the Patch Tool. It did an incredible job of adding in the clouds, which I painted in by the way, to give a beautiful sky for the background. Otherwise not much to this image – just had fun trying this new functionality. ….. Digital Lady Syd

Happy Halloween!

My annual Halloween image

I wasn’t going to do one this year, but I just love make Halloween pix so here it. These are the resources used in case you want to make one next year. Thanks to PixelSquid who has such fabulous objects to using for compositing on their site – the tomb, skeleton and both trees are from the site. Just used mainly a little Layer Style wizardry on them. The Cat and Bats from Deviant Arts mutato-nomine were custom shapes loaded into Photoshop. The Milky Way was from a Serge Ramelli video download and the moon from a free set called from Design Cuts called Planet Space Explosion Background and Ancient Texture. The text is called East Liberty Signature. Totally fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

A Distinguished Forefather Lemur

Image placed in an image of a famous painting.

I have always wanted to try this and I finally found a really great Photoshop tutorial on how to do it. This image started with a wonderful painting by Sofonsiba Anguissola called Portrait of a Spanish Prince from 1567 (it is probably an image of Prince Phillip III – the link gives some interesting perspective on this guy). Anyway, I will not go into all the steps since I pretty much just followed the steps presented in Chris Spooner’s video called How to Make a Fun Oil Painting Pet Portrait in Photoshop. This effect is especially popular with people’s pet images. The trick is to find an image that works with your pet image. It took a lot of manipulation using the Free Transform Tool with the Warp in the Options Bar to get it looking correct. And in this case, I had to use two other images of lemurs for the hands. The colors can be matched using the video after the images are combined. 2 Little Owl’s Carnevala 23 texture was added on top and set to Vivid Light at 65% layer opacity to get the illuminated effect in the background. If you want to have some fun, give this a try……Digital Lady Syd