3 Quarters Today

My Life, my photography, my passions

Photoshop Friday

Making Tulips “Pop” With Photoshop

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Photoshop is a powerful photography tool when used properly. My goal for most photo editing is to create an image that doesn’t look like it’s been edited. So let’s render an image of a tulip into something that pops just a little, but doesn’t take it over the edge.

See how subtle editing can improve a photograph without going over the top, as I have a tendency to do sometimes, according to my daughter.

Tulip SOOC (straight out of the camera)
Tulip SOOC (straight out of the camera)

This edit first involved adding a levels adjustment layer and darkening the whole image.  I selected the pink color in Image/Adjustment/Selective Color and added more magenta, which brightened the color in the petals.

The white portion of the petals seemed washed out so I then used the Burn tool and stroked over the creases in the bottom of the petal, which brought out the fine streaks.  I then used the sponge tool and desaturated the background.

I tried some special effects with this image, but I was never quite happy with them, so I settled on realism.

Learn How to Edit in Photoshop

120 Easy Tips And Tricks For Photoshop: LearningAdobe Photoshop CS6 Revealed (Adobe CS6)Adobe Photoshop CS6 Classroom in a BookAdobe Photoshop Elements 13Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan (Photoshop CC +

Tree Springs to Life in Photoshop

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Tree Springs to life in Photoshop

Sometimes my commute home takes twice as long as I stop and take pictures. Yesterday was no exception as the combination of the sky, clouds and the emerging spring greenery beckoned me more than once to stop the car.

The straight out of camera was just dull and flat. Not nearly what I saw visually with the naked eye. So after adjusting the white balance down from blue to more green in Gimp I then went to work in photoshop.

I first brightened the whole image. Then selected the blues in the sky and copied the results into their own sky layer. From there I adjusted the blue until it was vibrant.

As a result of brightening the foreground grass was blown out. To fix I color selected browns from the foreground and copied into a new layer. This layer I darkened. In actuality there are three different exposures in this image. Probably not technically correct, but that’s the result.

A little background on the tree, it’s been one of my favorite vistas on my drive home between Murdock and Elmwood for many years. I’ve often wanted to stop and take a picture against the ever changing Nebraska sky. Now I have an excuse. My goal is to take regular images as the seasons and weather changes, then stitch them together in a time lapse fashion to represent a yearly “life of a tree”.

Has anyone attempted something like this? If so I’d love to see the result.

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Photoshop Friday: Sunset Silhouette

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I’m starting a new series, Photoshop Friday. In one way I miss my 365 Project and blogging on a more regular basis, and between picking just one photo per week it leaves me little room to experiment with Photoshop. So I’ll be choosing photos which I think I can improve with post production. So here is week one of Photoshop Friday.

Photoshop and Raw through Gimp