Tonights sunset

[stigmundfreud]

In suburbia

[Fordo]

That, is a stunning photograph. looks like a nuke has gone off over the horizon!

HDR?

Must get myself a nice wide angle prime

[Mrs Fish]

I love the angle of that shot col pic.

[stigmundfreud]

Fordo said:

That, is a stunning photograph. looks like a nuke has gone off over the horizon!

HDR?

Must get myself a nice wide angle prime

not hdr no, well, not technically.

It was a single shot which was spotted on the road. I then created 2 jpegs - one of the car/houses and one balanced for the sky.

I then creaetd a new image, using the car/houses as the base layer I adjustd the levels to how I wanted them then pasted a cut out of the sky from the other image. The sky layer was then blended with multiply, I then added a 2nd sky layer and again set to multiply.

Here is a psd which should make the process simple to follow: http://www.clicketyclicks.co.uk/photoshop/sun.psd

ta Mrs Fish

Edited by stigmundfreud on Monday 17th March 19:59

[Gingerbread Man]

Cracking shot. Was just thinking that it looked HDRish but yet not at the same time. the above post explains it all. Cheers.

[john185k]

Love your post production techniques

[Chris71]

The hellmouth opens in suburbia.

Fantastic shot. As a photoshop beginner I'm confused as to how you were able to cut around the outlines of the detail (trees, telegraph poles etc.) - just careful use of the wand?

[stigmundfreud]

Chris71 said:

The hellmouth opens in suburbia.

Fantastic shot. As a photoshop beginner I'm confused as to how you were able to cut around the outlines of the detail (trees, telegraph poles etc.) - just careful use of the wand?

Chris did you look at the psd? There are a few ways to do the sky but the easist was to adujust the levels/contrast/saturation to enable an easy mask. Because there is a very clear definition between the houses and the sky it was easy to do this then use the wand. With wand if you use the shift key you can keep adding to the selection untl you have pretty much what you want.

I did it by selecting the sky then ran quick mask. The houses turned red (default colour of masked area) and I then, using a brush, masked any areas that the wand had missed (if you paint white you can also remove masking as needed). The mask was then inverted so the sky was coloured red and I went over with a black brush to again fine tune by masking the top part of the tree and the ariels.

Then apply a feather, I used a value of 4 for a subtle edge. The selection was then saved and I used this selection to do the final bit.

I wish I knew how some of the guys here do it on cars where they change the colours so easily!

[Chris71]

stigmundfreud said:

Chris71 said:

The hellmouth opens in suburbia.

Fantastic shot. As a photoshop beginner I'm confused as to how you were able to cut around the outlines of the detail (trees, telegraph poles etc.) - just careful use of the wand?

Chris did you look at the psd? There are a few ways to do the sky but the easist was to adujust the levels/contrast/saturation to enable an easy mask. Because there is a very clear definition between the houses and the sky it was easy to do this then use the wand. With wand if you use the shift key you can keep adding to the selection untl you have pretty much what you want.

I did it by selecting the sky then ran quick mask. The houses turned red (default colour of masked area) and I then, using a brush, masked any areas that the wand had missed (if you paint white you can also remove masking as needed). The mask was then inverted so the sky was coloured red and I went over with a black brush to again fine tune by masking the top part of the tree and the ariels.

Then apply a feather, I used a value of 4 for a subtle edge. The selection was then saved and I used this selection to do the final bit.

I wish I knew how some of the guys here do it on cars where they change the colours so easily!

Nope, I only read it this morning (at work).

So - you can adjust the various levels to make the area you want to select stand out, then reset them to normal after you've finished? Sounds useful.

Quick mask automatically masked the area you'd selected and then you used a brush to add areas of detail?

And the feathering was used to make the two selections look less artificial against eachother?

....Am I about right?

I'm still very impressed what even fairly basic use of photoshop can achieve and I haven't really played around with it enough yet to appreciate most of the features.

BTW The following might help with swapping colours on cars... maybe... http://www.grafx-design.com/17photo.html

[stigmundfreud]

thats about it! I just opend the jpeg twice, adjusted one shot for the tones I wanted in that the same for the other then cut the sky, bish bosh dropped it in jobs a good un

thanks for the link too!

[GetCarter]

Great shot!

[rmmackfc]

Great photo mate! ... I almost understood some of what you said too... bonus

[Tampon]

stigmundfreud said:

Here is a psd which should make the process simple to follow: http://www.clicketyclicks.co.uk/photoshop/sun.psd

That is awesome, thankyou for doing that, wondered why Paintshop pro was opening up on the computer, took the layers apart and saw the difference, but didn't understand it.

Can I ask, what is the difference between the two layers ?( in real basic terms, ie I made the sky darker in the first and the sun redder in the second etc ), and why couldn't you do it in the just one layer ?

Thanks
Tamps

Edited by Tampon on Tuesday 18th March 16:05

[stigmundfreud]

The sky is in effect made of 3 layers.

The original blown out version (due to lightening the shot for the car)

Then 2 identical layers of the darkened sky. By using the multiply blend option it resulted in the sky you see. Check out the psd file

[Chris71]

Ah, so you have the bright white-ish band in the far distance from the original shot, blended into the orangey band in the middle (darkened slightly) and then in turn blended into the nearest layer which has been darkened considerably?

Sorry if I appear to be repeating everything Complete PS novice and this all seems like black magic to me!

[stigmundfreud]

ok

bottom layer = blown out sky
2nd layer = the slightly darkend sky
3rd layer = duplicate of 2nd layer

blend options on both 2 and 3 are set to multiply. There is no other differences just the blend on the 3rd layer mutlpiles the blend on the 2nd layer