Spanish Cay Lonesome Beach
Spanish Cay is on the northern edge of the Bahamas – in this image you can see the blue water from the Atlantic Ocean outside the little cover areas shown. There are plenty of small beach areas that look wild and secluded just like this beach. This image was post-processed using Photoshop’s Sky Replacement panel as the sky in the original photo was totally flat (the sky is from a company that is out of business now); On1 Effects 2023 using the AI brush to select different parts of the image – used Dynamic Contrast on the dead branches, foreground water, and fence (see Getting Started with On1 Effects 2023 by On1 and How to Reveal Stunning Detail in Your Water Photos by Scott Davenport); and Camera Raw Filter (see The Photo Editing Trick Every Photographer Should Know! by Mark Denney). It was fun trying out all these techniques. …..Digital Lady Syd
Just a “Big Scoop”
Loved the vintage result of my favorite local ice cream place. This was a phone image processed using OnOne Photo Suite 9.5 (see sidebar for website link) – used B&W Effects and Perfect Effects to get this look. The original layer was converted to a Smart Object so I could tweak later the results. In B&W Effects, the Daguerreotype Clean preset was selected with adjustments to its settings. In Perfect Effects the Bleach Bypass preset was set to Lighter. With the Lighten Paintbrush, the umbrella was painted and with the Detail Paintbrush, the inside of building and picnic table were painted. Since the B&W effect was too strong, I clicked the little icon on the right edge of the Perfect BW layer in Photoshop and the opacity was changed to 75%. Then a layer was added on top to paint back in solid white border where needed. Last step was to distort the letters as they totally draw the eye whenever letters appear in an image. Just painted over with a little grunge brush. Enjoyed creating this vintage look!…..Digital Lady Syd
Another OnOne Perfect Effects Pix – Got to Love It!
 |
I discovered I really liked this image of an entryway into a building in Jackson, Mississippi, that was completely empty. Really sad to see such a nice space and nothing in it. Anyway, when I took the picture there was some vertical distortion (hover over image to see original) that I was not able to get rid of easily. While inside the Lens Correction Filter trying to straighten up these bowing lines, I discovered that the image looked really neat twisted – so that is how this picture started out.
The image was still a little flat so I decided to experiment some more in the updated plug-in from OnOne called Perfect Effects (see sidebar for website link). This image has three effects stacked – in Black & White tab, Roadie filter was chosen and set to Overlay blend mode at 73%; in Movie Looks, Urban Sickness set to Color blend mode at 78%; and in Vintage, Nicely Toasted set to Darken blend mode at 100%. The layer was duplicated and rasterized (right click layer and select rasterize to get rid of smart object) and the Sponge Tool was applied to the yellow leaves in the background to color them a bit more. On a duplicate layer a High Pass filter set to 9.1 was to sharpen the image and set to Soft blend mode. A final Curves Adjustment Layer was added for contrast and OnOne.s PhotoFilter acid burn controlled frame. That is it and I love the results!
This is how I like to experiment – just try different things as you go into the various parts of Photoshop – it can be amazing what you come up with. I did not imagine this image as a diagonal, but it really does the image justice. I hope this will give you some inspiration to try this technique on some of your pictures – it can be quite interesting…..Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd’s Related Blogs:
Digital Lady Syd’s Review of OnOne Perfect Effects
Pseudo HDR in OnOne Perfect Effects
First Try – OnOne’s Perfect Effects 3
Pseudo HDR in OnOne Perfect Effects
Since I have tried this in other plug-ins, I thought I would give it a shot in OnOne’s new Perfect Effects plug-in (see sidebar for link to OnOne’s website) to see if I could get a similar effect. Just as I thought – no problemo!
 |
This is a rather unremarkable image except I liked the carved eagle engraved on the building. Hover over the image to see the original. By using Perfect Effects, I was able to get that pseudo HDR effect easily. These are the effects used in this image stacked bottom to top: Black and White preset set to Roadie in Multiply Blend Mode at Strength 100; Color Enhancer (Open up Effect Options and select Color Enhancer) and Color Range Orange was chosen to bring out the Orange color by adjusting the Hue set to 37, Saturation set to 77 and Lightness set to 94 sliders; another Color Enhancer layer was added to adjust the Blue Color Range – Saturation to 92 and Lightness to -35; and another Color Enhancer layer set to Aqua Color Range – Saturation 46 and Lightness 18; next the Golden Hour Enhancer preset in the Landscape section at Strength 63; Vignette created in the Blending Options drop-down with Brightness set to -68, Midpoint 58, Feather 80 and Roundness 5 and Normal Mode; and finally Katy preset in Vintage section set to Strength 100. It sounds hard, but once done, just create a preset to recreate it anytime – very easy to apply. To finish up the image in Photoshop, on a New Layer the Sharpen Tool was used to selectively sharpen the Eagle and some of the window lines. Finally the OnOne’s PhotoFrames zoom_19 frame was applied.
NOTE: After applying each layer preset or effects settings, be sure to click the Add button under the Strength slider to set the changes. To toggle the original and current views, press CTRL+P.
Well once again this was lots of fun and pretty easy to do. Give it a try and see if you like what you see. If you are interested in the pseudo HDR look, check some of my related posts below……Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd’s Related Blogs:
Digital Lady Syd’s Review of OnOne Perfect Effects
First Try – OnOne’s Perfect Effects 3!
Pseudo HDR Using NIK Color Efex Pro 4
Another Pseudo HDR Image with NIK CEP4 – Got to Love the Effect!
With One Good Photo – Try the Pseudo HDR Effect
