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Monday, September 08, 2008
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| | Author | Messages | |
Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:378
 | | 06/09/2008 6:49 PM |
| This week I took a flat, lifeless image, and added some creative surrealist touches to it. The image was overprocessed so it had a slight graininess to it. I figured I could play on that as well as the cool bench they were sitting on.
- First I basically destroyed the tonal info in the image by tweaking the shadows and highlights a few times. This really exaggerated the noise in the image and altered the color (which I wanted)
- By duplicating the tweaked layer and setting the duplicate's blend mode to soft light, I greatly increased the contrast and saturation.
- I then applied a color balance correction where I "cooled" the image off by adding blue and cyan to the mids and shadows.
- To accent some of the crazy highlighted areas brough out by my Shadow/Highlights hijinks, I added a diffused glow to the image. After that I added some more noise and an unsharpen mask adjustment to bring some of the edge detail back.
- With the main image finished, it was time to add some background elements starting with a cool tree stock image that I set to multiply, duplicated and flipped horizontally on the opposite side. Repetition with shapes is currently a hot trend.
- I then chose a stock photo for the water in the foreground and masked most of what I didn't need from it out. The blend mode was also set to multiply to darken and blend the layer with the others.
- The last stock image I chose was a cloudy sky which I simply set to overlay so that the clouds added "sparkles" all over the image.
- I gave the finished composite a slight vignette.
- The last thing I add was some type which I applied to a curved path. With the pen tool set to paths, I created an arc. Then with the text tool, I set the insertion point at the beginning of the arc and typed my text.
- To finish off I added some layerstyles to the type; drop shadow and outerglow.
- Quick and dirty composite, surreal image!
I will gladly answer any questions about the above process or any other of the JW5 videos.
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| Ron Dyar
ePhotoPros Staff
San Diego, Ca
Forum Fanatic
Posts:398
| | 06/09/2008 7:34 PM |
| I liked the text-on-a-path - i knew it could be done, but personally have not had a need to do it... cool to see it in action!
not sure we have made a video just on that - if not, add it to the list of things to do.
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| Jeff St John
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:378
| | 06/09/2008 8:00 PM |
| | You're right, we don't have a video yet of type on a path you create, but there is a nice diagram in the Tips and Tricks section showing just that! | | | |
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