FINE TEXTURES AND PHOTOGRAPHIC OVERLAYS TO ENHANCE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AND MORE


Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Chasing the wind


Its always nice to wake up and find another one of your babies gracing
a published book cover! Here's today's, an American thriller,
heavily textured with our flypaper painterly textures.
Its just a preview copy as its not yet out, so I expect their colours will hopefully not be as muddled as this one with its quick run though our preferred Nik Color Bi Filters.
I'm reprinting the original recipe from this summer but we'll have a brand new image and recipe shortly!
Book synopsis and pre-sales Amazon


I'm no stalker, but when I see a great silhouette, and I'm armed with a camera, I will sometimes move just a few tiny paces to try to get a secret shot!

Our narrow medieval streets are perfect for this type of shot, though for the same reason our streets are often too shaded and thus too dark, and don't even get me started on my pet hate, parked cars! Here I used the trusty Lensbaby once more, lens wide open, at F1; no aperture. It was around 5pm, before the sun wasn't too low but also not directly overhead.

As we've been asked, Ive tried to recreate how I processed, step by step, and why I chose the textures used.

To the base image, to add more definition, I first slightly cross processed it and used a slight vignette darkening the edges. You can do this simply with free photoshop actions

To start with texturing I wanted to add more light. For my recent lensbaby shots I like to use the new Opal texture, here I used it twice, then I wanted to add a more beefy texture and darken the sky, I chose Tempest Sea, flipped vertically.
I loved the painterly/scratchy effect on the blue scaffolding covers brought by this texture, but found the overall blue a little too bright/fruity. So another favorite texture was pulled out, Newt to help tone down, which was okay but still not quite there, so I clicked it off. Finally I tried Swans Way for the first time, as I liked the look of that billowing canvas like movement this texture suggests, and Wow, happy days! It toned down the blue perfectly and pulled it all together and added a dramatic cracked grunge!

It was almost finished but decided there was now just a bit too much street clutter which the textures had highlighted.
So I clone tooled out a red road sign on the right, and a pale board on the left under the scaffolding, both clearly visible on the raw base image.

Opal - Overlay @ 74 % softly brushed from bottom edge and tot of sky
Opal - Overlay @ 100 % softly brushed from bottom edge and all of sky and right building
Tempest Sea - Overlay @ 45% Flipped vertically
Swans Way - Soft Light @ 100%

Spring Painterly Pack
40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only
$40
Add to Cart

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only $40
Add to Cart

Complete Flypaper Package
 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly
$220
Add to Cart

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges
Add to Cart

Combo Pack Offer
Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two
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Fly Edges Pack
Only $40
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Monday, November 14, 2011

Looking North



Another photo of my favourite beach, taken on a warmer and sunnier day than the previous photo of it I posted here.  I was lucky that I managed to catch a passing gull when I snapped this.
Onto the  processing...
Beau Linge Paysage @ Soft Light 13% masked from the lower portion of the photo
Evening Veil @ Soft Light 100%
Oxford Parchment @ Soft light 100% masked from the upper portion of the photo
Nik pro contrast (though you could use curves) to increase the contrast of the sea. I masked this from the lower portion.
Villa Adriana @ Overlay 92% masked from the central portion)
Beau Linge Paysage and Villa Adriana are from the SpringPainterly pack, Oxford Parchment and Evening Veil are from the Summer Painterly Pack

See it larger on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack
40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only
$40
Add to Cart

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only $40
Add to Cart

Complete Flypaper Package
 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly
$220
Add to Cart

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges
Add to Cart

Combo Pack Offer
Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two
Add to Cart

Fly Edges Pack
Only $40
Add to Cart

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The King and I


Over in Thailand they are now suffering badly from flooding,
when we were there at this famous Unesco protected site we learned that this area of ruins was the original setting for Rogers and Hammerstein's - The King and I musical!
The blockbuster movie was about a widow who accepts a job as a live-in governess of the King of Siam's children.
Later, it was attacked by the Burmese and was ransacked, so the Royal family moved south to the impressive capital city it is today, Bangkok!
This abandoned site was always prone to flooding, being on an island on a monsoon river, so unsurprisingly this stupa is today standing in floodwater, and ironically Bangkok is also suffering as the rainfall has been unprecedented.

Back here in sunnier times as illustrated, its nice to be able to share dramatic before and after transformations here on the blog.
That tree, I ummed and ahhed about, should it stay or should it go?
I even started processing with it in place but then thought;
"When I add textures its going to get too cluttered",
so thats when it had to go.
Firstly as the image was a little bit soft I used Photoshop Water colour filter effect, very lightly with a Normal layer @ 50% for the painterly effect.
I started with Nik colour filters, I chose their Bi Color Filter, its a lovely blue on one side and yellow on the other, you can easily spin it around so I made the sky on the right bluer and darker and the Stupa lighter and sunnier. I was very happy with this but it need something else, something more than cheerful colours? Of course, it needed our flypaper textures!
I pulled Pantheon Stone out of the Summer textures pack and popped it on top of the whole picture, this lightened the stupa even more, I always think stone textures look good on architecture!
Next, I wanted to balance the sky and add depth so out came our famous Pans Sky from the Summer textures pack and I pulled it over the image pulling it to the bottom, not worrying about distortion. It worked beautifully, it was like the sun coming out and highlighting the stupa where it needed it most! I removed some of the sky texture from the stupa but left about 50% in the middle, but more like 80% at the top and bottom.

recipe
Duplicate of Base - Photoshop Water colour filter effect Normal @ 50%
Nik Bi Color Filter Normal @ 75%
Pantheon Stone Overlay @ 34%
Pans Sky Overly @ 100% 50% softly removed from mid stupa

Spring Painterly Pack
40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only
$40
Add to Cart

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only $40
Add to Cart

Complete Flypaper Package
 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly
$220
Add to Cart

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges
Add to Cart

Combo Pack Offer
Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two
Add to Cart

Fly Edges Pack
Only $40
Add to Cart

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Lily-of-the-Valley


Another small scented treasure that's flowering in my garden at the moment. Lily-of-the-valley is one of my favourite flowers and I look forward to its season every year.  It's amazing how such a small flower can give so much fragrance, a tiny sprig can fill a room with it's scent.

Now the processing, I didn't like the darkness of the wood in the background of this shot so used textures to lighten and brighten. The recipe is very simple.
Lyme Fossil @overlay 47%
Peach Blush @ Hard light 100% masked from the focus areas (it's this texture that did the lightening of the wood.
Copy of Background @ soft light 50%
I could have left it at this but to soften things slightly I added
Gelato Ice @ screen 10%

Lyme Fossil and Gelato Ice are from the Spring Painterly Pack, Peach Blush is from Tex Box 2
See it slightly bigger on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack
40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only
$40
Add to Cart

Summer Painterly Pack
36 large textures for only $40
Add to Cart

Complete Flypaper Package
Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly
$180
Add to Cart

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges
Add to Cart

Combo Pack Offer
Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two
Add to Cart

Fly Edges Pack
Only $40
Add to Cart

See all our packs and deals on one Page