fog after snow

Happy New Year to everyone!
A big thanks to Jill for taking care of things whilst I was mostly off-line in the country;-) I'm just back from Surrey in England, where I've seen more snow than I have for years! Those pics are yet to come, but first an old favorite of mine, trees in fog. Very simply processed using only Matmos lake flipped upside down and used twice. The version shown is a square crop, just for flypapers!

Base duplicated, slight enhancement with HDR CS5 - Lighten @ 40%
Matmos Lake, flipped vertically with color saturation changed to a green/blue tone, blurred with Gaussian blur 80% - Soft Light 88%
Matmos Lake flipped vertically with color saturation changed to a green/blue tone Color @ 48%
See the finished version on Flickr

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morning mist

I was emailed a few weeks ago, asking how to create a mist effect
with textures. My tardy answer is now shown here (sorry Bob!)
This image was captured on the mountains last January.
I'd not used these particular images because although I shot them in raw, It still had blown out areas.
However, with our new textures it came to me just last night, a bit of a revelation! - Don't bother hiding the blow-outs, simply lighten and texture the rest of the image! :-)
Necropolis is still my all time personal favorite texture, but these days I tend to use a tweaked version. Just the other day, you might recall,
I used a dark green version?
You can create your own easily by following this tip:
With the aid of the Colour sliders at the top in photoshop I turned this texture to a dark indigo colour with the slider pushed all the way to the right. I then save and use like a new texture, the beauty of this new texture are - no warm/brown tones!
How to:
Top of Photoshop - Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation -
Hue @ +180
Saturation @-28
Lightness @ -23
Save this Texture and name it 'Necropolis Indigo' for future tutorials!
Here's my texture recipe
Necropolis (turned into an indigo blue as discussed) Opacity - Soft Light @ 89%
Necropolis (indigo blue), used on blown out highlights at the top only) Opacity - Color Burn @ 8%
Apple Blush - Opacity - Overlay @ 68%

At this point something wasn't quite right, the sky colour didn't really blend with the picture. So I flattened all my layers and started with a second onslaught of texture! This time from Tex Box Two.
If you look at the base image you'll see the bottom of the image is very dark with no mist, it wasn't really working.
So I pulled out the 'Leaden Hall' texture - don't ask me why I thought this might work - I was lucky!
I flipped this texture vertically and so the pale part was at the bottom. The Skirt at the top was pulled above the picture top and cut off.
To create the extra fog and pull together, I simply turned this Leaden Hall texture to - Opacity - Screen @ 61%
I blurred it a little and I also changed this layer to B/W and changed the colour to a green/blue with the top sliders.
I then removed the top half of the texture with a very soft eraser brush, used selectively.
Last finishing texture was:

Chlorophyll Opacity - Soft Light @ 57%
Used to just add a slight vignette at the edges.
Further colour tweaks to finish.

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Three routes into mist

Another misty 'Canal du Midi' shot, just west of Beziers,
our famous local French Atlantic coast to the French Mediterranean sea connection. One of the main reasons for its being built was to avoid having to sail around Spain.
Because just over two hundred years ago those pesky Spanish Pirates were quite a problem!
This in turn brought wealth to the wine producers in this area,
further unimagined riches came with the railways, over a hundred years later.
But that's another story..

The beautiful mile upon mile of huge poplar trees were planted to give the pulling horses and barge drivers some shade and help stop the canal water from overheating and thus turning stagnant in our hot summers.
Hope you're taking notes as there will be a test later! :-)

First of all, try the Curves option to bring out more light.
This picture is made from 4 images joined together in 'Autopanopro'
As always, I list from the base texture up.
Apple blush - Opacity - soft light @ 18%
Raw Linen - Opacity - Hard Light @ 29%
Caramel Soft - Opacity - Soft Light @ 100%
Caramel Soft - Opacity - Overlay @ 17%