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Blue sea
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Shot on Kilmuckridge beach in Wexford. The light was terrible and all the photos taken that day looked rather insipid. So I had a play around in photoshop and this was the result. I like it, but I do love anything blue so could be prejudiced! C&C welcome.
Hi Nicole,
The comment in your post “..I like it…” is very important.The colour is “interesting”. The horizon is not straight which is very easy to fix in photoshop. It is something that you should keep an eye on while taking the shot as you will have to crop out some of the image after straightening it in software. This may ruin the composition of what otherwise may be a very good shot. Keep shooting.
John.Thanks John. I always seem to end up with crooked horizons, il have to watch out for it more!
I had another look & there seems to be a bend on the horizon.
Maybe one of our more learned members might advise you on this.
John.Should be able to correct the barrel distortion on the horizon using this in Photoshop
Not sure about the blue tone. I wonder if you tried doing the image as a duotone instead would it help. I would always be careful about using a toning on any picture if your aim is to correct what you feel is an otherwise mundane shot. I’m not saying this is mundane but you said yourself that it was lacking something. A common fault with my students is that if they feel that a particular B&W print just doesn’t make the grade, they’ll throw it in the sepia toner and all of a sudden it’s a masterpiece.
I would look at changing the cropping and a bit of dodging/burning. What is it that attracts you to the picture? Establish that and it will give you the focus (pardon the pun) you are looking for to create an emphasis in the photo. I think it might be the highlights in the foam in the foreground. Selective blurring elsewhere? Vignetting? Don’t look to cover mistakes, look to enhance points of interest. Finally, if too much processing is involved in a particular image then refer back to your original visualisation when you were taking the photo and decide are you heading away from that and do you want to?Thanks for the replies. thedarkroom, I tried that spherize but it didnt seem to help much, it just bent the horizon in another place instead. Im not great with Photoshop though so its prob just me. I may just crop out the horizon instead. I did convert to b&w instead of the blue tone:
PS: What is Vignetting? I keep seeing it mentioned and cant find a option in PS?
Hi Nicole,
I am guessing a little bit here but is the image you posted a crop of a larger image? If so, is the bend on the horizon more uniform across the original image. The solution suggested by thedarkroom may work when applied to the original image.Hope I am not misleading you on this.
My understanding of vignetting is that it is the darkening of the extremities of an image. This can be done on purpose to emphasise the subject of a photograph or unintentionally. It can be caused, for example, by lens hoods, stacked filters and by certain lenses when set to certain apertures.
John.
Your horizon is both curved and tilted. I would correct the tilt first, easily done with the measure
tool in PS. For the curve, you could try PTLens — google it — it isn’t dear, and works very well for
this sort of problem. Alternatively, correct the tilt, and then markedly exaggerate the curve — so
that it looks as if meant to be curved. I prefer the coloured version.Sometimes I find that if you increase the canvas size by say 25% before using the spherize filter that it can help as the other distortions then happen outside the image. You then crop back down to the original image to get the corrected picture. Also, as rc53 says, correct the tilt first before doing the spherize.
David
I usually get quite upset when I see tilted horizons, but in this case I don’t think it matters too much. It seems to be tilting the right way if you see what I mean.
However, if you are doing a distortion correction, ALWAYS correct the distortion before you correct the tilt.I like this conversion too. Not overdone in my eyes.
Thanks for all the advice guys, really appreciate it. I have been playing around trying to straighten the horizon and nothing seems to fix it in a way that looks any better. Hmmm. Il keep working on it, fingers crossed!!
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