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King Bladud’s Pig

An image of King Bladud's Pig
This little pig has an interesting story since the image was taken way back in 2008 when the Town of Bath in England was having a public art event to celebrate Bath’s origins and artists. King Bladud’s (cc863 BC) Pig (this is the pigs actual name and was created by Annette Martin) is one of 106 pigs that were on display all over the city (I only saw a few) and they were sold at auction to raise money for the benefit of Bath’s Two Tunnels Project.

The post-processing was minimal in Lightroom, just some Basic slider adjustments. In Photoshop, On1 Photo Raw Effects 2018 was used to sharpen the image (Dynamic Contrast filter, Sharpening filter and HDR Look filter – all just applied to the pig only with a mask). Lucis Pro filter was also used on further sharpen the pig. Next a texture by French Kiss (see sidebar for website link) called Color Wash Sage was added and a layer mask was used to paint the pig through the texture with a black brush. A New Layer was added and a shadow was painted in under the pig with a darker blue tone. Another texture by French Kiss called Redstrake was added and set to Color Burn blend mode at 65% Fill Opacity. Nik Viveza 2 was added to add a little vignetting. A text layer was added using a font called Juice ITC. Last step added one of my layer style frames (see my How to Create a Quick Layer Style Border or Frame blog). Wish I had taken more pics of these beautiful pigs!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/16/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters, Textures | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

A Bird and His Reflection

Image of a Black Crowned Heron at the Jacksonville Zoo
This little Black Crowned Night Heron at the Jacksonville Zoo had a pretty interesting reflection in the shallow wet water. And that eye – not even touched up – just bright red! I really love photographing birds just being birds! And not much was done with this image – in Lightroom applied the Modern 10 profile. In Photoshop On1 Photo Raw 2018 Effects (see sidebar for website link) was opened and the Dynamic Contrast filter was applied to just the bird (masked out the background), Sharpening filter, and the HDR Look filter to just parts of the bird (masking out other areas again). Nik Viveza was opened and used to adjust the tones for the focal point in the bird. A vignette was created around the heron. Last step added a layer style frame and that was it. Pretty easy to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/05/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Who’s Looking Out the Window?

Image of Edinburgh, Scotland, cityscape
This is an image taken in Edinburgh, Scotland – not sure what is in the window. Just did a little post-processing on this since it was in pretty good shape already. A Curves Adjustment Layer was added to darken the overall image. Then three New Layers set to Overlay blend mode and white, yellow and orange red was painted in the areas that had those colors to bring out the color more – basically just a spotlight effect. A Dodge and Burn Layer was used to make some of the roofs stand out. These layers were all part of painting with light in the image. A vignette was applied and a frame added as a last step. Pretty easy and no filters!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/01/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Leave A Comment »

A Mermaid in the Mist of a Fountain

Image of Linlithgow Palace Fountain in Scotland
This is another image of part of the interesting Fountain at Linthlithgow Palace in Scotland (where Mary, Queen of Scots was born). The fountain was built in 1538 by James V – it has been known to flow with wine on a few occasions. These colors came from the image itself so I imagine at some time it was quite beautiful. I found the mermaid a rather interesting character in the mist of all the other statues. (See my previous Deer on a Fountain blog.) In Lightroom applied the new Artistic 04 profile that comes with LR/ACR, cropped the image, and did a few basic slider adjustments. In Photoshop duplicated the background layer and opened up Luminar 2018 (see sidebar for website link) where the AI Filter, Brilliance and Warmth, and Image Radiance filters were applied. The background was duplicated again and a Gaussian Blur set to 4.0 was applied to soften the stone in the palace which was very distracting behind the fountain. A layer mask was added to the Luminar layer and the background was painted out so the blur layer shows through. A 50% gray dodge and burn layer was also used to help emphasize the figures. A stamped layer was created and Nik Viveza 2 was used to direct attention to the mermaid. Last step involved adding a spotlight effect on the mermaid using a large white brush at 9% Flow on an Overlay blend mode layer. That was it. Would love to go back and take some more pics!…..Digital Lady Syd

05/30/2018 | Categories: Historical Info, Photoshop Filters | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Butterfly Paradise

Digital Art image of a forest with lots of colorful butterflies
This image was created using an image by Simon Matzinger at Unsplash, one of my favorite images to use for PS experimentation. Creative Live recently had another Photoshop Week and an interesting class was presented by Simon Peter Raible on Using Photoshop to Extend Images. I had to try out some of the technique so here it is the result of one of them. If you look at the original file, it does not have near as many trees in it. Following the technique in the videos, this is how the whole background ended up with a little clean up. Several more trees were added that were rendered in PS and is also explained in the videos. A layer had to be added to adjust sunlight on some of the trees and several layers were used to add the Beautiful Watercolor Butterflies by Knopazyzy. The center butterfly was from a brush set by All Things Precious called Vintage Butterflies Set 1 – just painted underneath to add color the butterfly. The string of small butterflies of different sizes I created using a Butterfly brush my Marrielle P Kokosidou. (Created a paintbrush and setting it to a small size with Spacing at 180%, Shape Dynamics Size Jitter 24% and Angle Jitter 21%, and a Color Dynamics set to 100% Foreground/Background Jitter, a little Hue, and Purity -24%.) Some color was sprayed on them. Topaz (see sidebar for website link) ReStyle was used to get a nice overall color tone to the forest image using the Dark Goldenrod Sunset preset. It was fun to try out the new technique and work with one of my favorite subjects, butterflies……Digital Lady Syd

05/25/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Pink Carnation

Macro image of a digitally painted pink carnation
This flower was in a group from some birthday flowers – tried a few macro shots on them and got some really nice results. I decided I wanted to go through some of my brushes and pick some specialty mixers for painting. Most of the brushes were from Fay Sirkis, a Corel Painter Master. If you have a chance to get hold of some of her mixer brushes, they are still some of the best around even though they are older. Photoshop has not updated their actual brush engine except for the Smoothing section in many years so they work just fine. Her Four Seasons brushes, which is a really good set, can still be downloaded at KelbyOne if you are a member – just do a search for Fay and several webinars will appear with the brushes as a download set. A Curves Adjustment Layer was added along with French Kiss Feb 2018 Bonus texture (she give out many goodies during the year in her E-mails and this was one – website link is in sidebar). A Red Channel Luminosity Curves Adjustment Layer was applied (see my How to Use a Red Channel to Create a Nice Blended Image Effect blog) see my and one of my frame layer styles was added (see my How to Create a Quick Layer Style Border or Frame blog). I love some of the nice effects these brushes gave – not bad for Photoshop!…..Digital Lady Syd

05/16/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Stately Portrait

Image of a Masked Lapwing bird
Loved the way this bird looks so stately. I actually started this image in Lightroom using Serge Ramelli’s Black and White Contrast Contrast yellow orange-light photo preset from his Urban Look set . I am major hooked on On1 Photo Raw 2018 (see sidebar for website link) Effect’s Dramatic Contrast filter used with the Sharpening filter. On both filters used a layer mask so only the bird was affected. Back in PS used a Red Channel Luminance Curves Adjustment Layer. (See my How To use a Red Channel to Create a Nice Blended Image Effect blog.) Next a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using the Foggy Night preset set to 32% was added. On a stamped layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) used Topaz (see sidebar for website link) DeNoise 6 and painted in areas that needed attention, mainly around the face. An Exposure Adjustment Layer was used on the eye and set to 88%. (See my The Eyes Have It – How to Make Them Pop in an Image blog.) A Digital Grain Layer was added over the whole image. Last step was to finish up with one of my frames (see my How to Create a Quick Layer Style Border or Frame blog). I love my birds!…..Digital Lady Syd

05/10/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Ponce de Leon Hotel

Image of Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida
This is an image of Flagler College, or the now defunct Ponce de Leon Hotel that Henry Flagler built back in 1890. It is one of the most striking things to see in St. Augustine, Florida. And they do have tours a couple times a day which is well worth the expense as you get to the see the Tiffany stained glass windows and some of the original rooms with decor from the era.  This image was mainly post-processed using On1 Photo Raw 2018 Effects (see sidebar for website link) to add the warmth, replace the gray sky, and add some sharpness to the image. Enough for blogging today……Digital Lady Syd

05/08/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Teacher and Student

Image of architectural sculpture of a Teacher and Student on the College School Building in Edinburgh, Scotland
Am planning on taking a few weeks off from blogging to get some things done around the home – blogging takes up a lot time, so this will be it for a few! This image is of some architectural sculpture associated with the “Castle School” building connected to the Camera Obscura building in Edinburgh, Scotland, near the castle. I thought the sculpture was really charming of a teacher and her student. In LR the image used a Profile by VoxColor called NC to get the interesting tones. In Photoshop just did some normal clean up, used a Black and White Adjustment Layer, a Curves Adjustment Layer, and a Dodge and Burn layer. On a stamped layer, opened up Topaz Studio (see sidebar for website link) and applied the Impression Adjustment and Topaz AI ReMix Adjustment at 0.14 to add some painterly effect into the image. Then added several painting layers using my SJ Pastel 3 brushes (see my How to Create my Favorite Brush Blog and my Painting Fun in Photoshop Blog) to smooth out some of the paint strokes from the Impression filter. A New Layer set to Overlay was used to add a little spotlight effect on the figures. French Kiss (see sidebar for website link) Solstice Initiation texture was set to Color Burn blend mode at 59%. A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was clipped to it and the Saturation was reduced to -43 to reduce the color effect of the texture. Finished off with Nik Viveza 2 to draw focus a little more into the sculpture. Last step was to create a vignette using Matt Kloskowski’s technique (see my How to Create a Subtle Vignette blog). That was it – lots of fun here! Will try to add some more blogs as time allows!…..Digital Lady Syd

05/05/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters, Photoshop Painting, Topaz Studio | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Just Dazzling

Image of a Little Daisy
Got some beautiful flowers for my kids this past week so I pull out the old trusty Nikon and added my old LensBaby Composer to it. Got some really nice soft effects like the one shown above using a 2.8 aperture and a +10 Macro 37 mm lens. It is a lot of fun to experiments with this lens – always give surprising results. Used Nicolesy Contempo 02 profile on the image and used a Daylight White Balance in Lightroom. Did a few Basic Panel adjustments and on into Photoshop where the background was cleaned up. Nik Viveza 2 was used on the image to clean up all the edges and sharpen the focus a little. Then some clean up with both my regular SJ Pastel 3 painting brush and a mixer brush. Added two textures: one of my textures that is gray and white and set to Linear Burn blend mode at 44% layer opacity and one of 2 Lil Owls Studio (see sidebar for website link) workshop texture set to Multiply blend mode. Added text using the Naive Deco Sans font with a Bevel & Emboss and Outer Glow layer style. Last step involved adding the frame created in one of my You Tube videos to finish up. I really like the LensBaby effect – still looks good even when using an older version……Digital Lady Syd

05/01/2018 | Categories: Photoshop Filters | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

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