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

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Stormy Sunday

Yesterday our daylight saving/summer time started here in New Zealand, the weather was far from summery with showers and a biting cold wind. In the afternoon we decided to go for a walk at one of the city beaches but on arriving we discovered that the tide was too high to actually get down to the beach added to this it started to rain and sleet!
The sea however was wonderfully dramatic -just the kind of seas I love and getting photos like this one made braving the weather worthwhile. We're hardy souls down here in Dunedin -there was even a surfer out amongst the waves,  I suspect the water may have been warmer than the air yesterday.

So onto the processing, and it was relatively simple....
Villa Adriana @ Overlay 77%
Umbra Eclipse @  Soft light 100% and masked from the lower portion of the photo using a graduated mask.
Curves layer to tweak tone/contrast
I finished with a Brilliance/Warmth filter from Nik Color Efex to add a tiny amount of warmth.
And it was done.
Both textures are from the Spring Painterly pack.
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Another Beach

I textured and posted this one to flickr soon after we launched the spring painterly set, I especially loved the effect the impressionist Sisley texture gives here.
Often you can get away with using just one texture in processing, but I tend to build up the layers to add depth, even repeating the same texture twice at different opacities often works wonders.
Anyway here's the processing....

Curves layer to tweak tone this was masked off the upper portion using a graduated layer mask
Spring Equinox @ Soft Light 62%
Syrinx @ Soft Light 100% masked from upper portion using graduated layer mask
Syrinx @ Soft light 100% masked as above
Hue saturation layer to warm the image slightly
Sisley @ Soft light 77%
Spring Equinox @ Soft light 100 % masked from the central portion as I just wanted the texture on the edges
Gelato Ice @ Multiply 100% Masked from the sea

All textures are from the Spring Painterly Pack

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Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

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Mirage

I never tire of the beach! I visit this city beach on a regular basis and it's different every time I go. On this occasion the sea fog combined with a very low tide provided wonderful shooting conditions, if the sun had peeked through the clouds that would have been the icing on the cake but unfortunately it didn't cooperate.
I've just made a Redbubble Calendar of my Flypaper flowers, perhaps I should do a beach one too :-)

The starting image you see above has already been toned blue using various adjustments.
Then it was texture time...
Pistachio @ Overlay 25%
Lavender Skies @ Soft light 100%
Brushed Rose @ Overlay 68%
Then I merged visible Ctrl -Alt-Shift-E and used the PS5 fake HDR adjustment on the merged layers to enhance contrast and colour.
I then added
Brushed Rose @ Linear light 23% and desaturated a little, removed from the lower portion using a graduated mask.
Curves adjustment to brighten the foreground.

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Sunday Stroll

I've got lots of photos like this with distant people walking on the beach, at one stage I'd have wanted an completely deserted beach but now I seek out opportunities like this.  Luckily our beaches down here are often all but deserted, especially at this time of the year.

Now the processing, I think I used a texture from each pack in this one.
Sariel Leather @ soft light 100% blurred
Fly Edges 16 @ Multiply 60%
Voyageur Map @ Soft Light 100%
Algae@ Overlay 100%
Tarte Tatin @ Screen 22% masked from the sky
Ming @ Overlay 100% masked from the beach
And it was done!
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Wish you were here....

This was taken at a lovely little beach called Bobby's Head about half an hour north of Dunedin which is now a wildlife reserve,  there's been much planting over the past 15 or so years to restore the area to its natural state after years of farming. The beach has wonderfully golden sands and is bordered at the south end by fascinating sandstone cliffs. It's a habitat of the rare Yellow-eyed penguins and we were lucky enough to see some, one on the beach and the other at its nest up a cliff. Unfortunately as usual I had the wrong lens on the camera for taking photos of wildlife -wide angle lenses are good for landscapes but not for penguins.

Now the processing, it's hard to tell from the finished photo but it was actually quite overcast and dull when we were at the beach, textures (and a bit of photoshop magic) have turned a dull late winter day into summer!

Pistachio @ overlay 58 % using a layer mask I removed the texture from the sky. This texture accentuated the orange of the sand.
Lavender skies @ Soft light 95% just on the sky
Next I added a sky layer from my archives to add some drama, it was a blue sky with clouds and I used it at overlay 100%
Oxford Parchment @ overlay 100% masked off the sky, another texture which warmed the sand.
Purple Haze@Overlay 100% I used a graduated mask on this layer to remove some of the texture from the lower portion of the photo
Finally to tweak the sky colour I used two colour fill layers
A Bright yellow @  Overlay 24%
Aqua  colour @ Screen 21%  -both these layers were just used on the sky.

Pistachio, Oxford Parchment and Purple Haze are from the Summer Painterly Set, Lavender Skies is from Tex Box 2

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Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.
John Keats

We came across this tired looking starfish in a beach pool the day after watching Bright Star, the movie about the doomed English romantic Poets love life. The movie was shot with an attractive blue filter. This was the simple inspiration behind this post processing!

See it on Flickr

Base duplication, B/W - Multiply @ 45%
Lime Plaster - Overlay @ 27%
Ming - Overlay @ 100%
Ming - Overlay @ 100%
Ming- Overlay @ 100%
Merge, and finally adjust color to warm up.

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dune daisies

Its nice when we can show an image that has really been brought
to life with textures!
Taken on our local beach sand dunes with a hazy late afternoon sun.
I wanted to bring the fresh tones out. The fact that the sun was weak helped stop blow-outs and of course the trusty old polarized lens filter also helped.

The original picture is in a landscape format, but this square crop was taken from the center, thus the texture edges, notably, Labyrinth with its dark moody edge effect has been mostly lost.

Apple Blush - Soft Light @ 74%
Necropolis (desaturated) - Soft Light @ 77%
Labyrinth - Overlay @ 37%
Raw Linen - Soft Light @ 100%

After I had finished I decided I wanted more brightness, so just for a change after saving all the layers and merging, I tried Auto brightness and Contrast. I saved just 50% of this brightening effect.

Our single packs are all still available (click on the sidebar links) but due to popular request we have introduced a triple deal, all three packs for $100!

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Please note that this is big, almost 400 mb file so the download may take a while. Average reported download time for this pack varies from 15 to 20 mins, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!