Ephemeral/Eternal: Before/After
In the spirit of mutual learning....
It seems accidents are my best teachers.
During my post processing of this bubble I noticed that the sky tones had become faintly banded. Not wanting this look usually, I was about to go back and attempt to correct it. But I paused...and saw how the banded lines echoed the swirling patterns of the bubble...and thought 'hmmmm...'
So here's what I can remember (sortof):
Canon SX10is
f5.6; 1/500; ISO 200.
1. Once open in PSE9 I could see it was pretty noisy. I didn't want to apply a low noise filter to the whole thing...as it would take out too much detail from the bubble...So using the quick selection tool at about 50% I selected only the sky and made a new layer from this selection (layer1).
2. On layer1 (just the sky) I think I applied a Gaussian Blur filter. It was still a bit noisy and I applied a Surface Blur filter. (Both found under filters>blur). At this stage in PSE9 I thought it looked ok and moved on. But later I saw that it was HERE that the two filters combined to make the swirly banded designs... faint but still visible.
3. Some of the filter processing from 2. drifted onto the bubble ...so I used the eraser at a low % to clean this up.
4. I went back to the original layer (the background layer) and selected just the bubble and made a new layer from this selection (layer2).
5. On the bubble (layer2) I used Enhance>Adjust Colour<Adjust Colour Curves...random playing around until I got an effect that I liked. This also gave the bubble a warm tone. So...
6. I went into layer1 (the sky) and applied a warming filter to make it look more natural with the bubble.
7. Back to the bubble layer...I made another layer from this (layer2 copy) and used dodge&burn to work it a bit more. The outer edge of the circle had become too dark so I dodge this back too. Every layer I use the transparency slider to adjust the amount of change I want to apply.
8. Sometime around here I saw the banded swirls in the sky...
Decided to try and enhance them and see what happened.
From the sky (layer1) I copied another layer (layer1 copy).
9. On layer1copy I used Enhance<Adjust Lighting<Shadows/Highlights & also Brightness/Contrast to make the swirls stand out more. They did!! A bit too much ;-) Some areas were too dark....and I thought it a bit too uniform. Soooo...
10. I used the dodge tool to lighten the dark areas (quite a lot) and then I used the Eraser to softly take out and tone back some large areas of marbling....especially just around the sphere.
One of the interesting things about the swirly banding is that every time I've tried to recreate it, it's come out differently...
Whew! Thats about it....and you probably prefer the original anyway ;-)
If you're interested I've put my before/after images into a pile: www.flickr.com/photos/birdcloud1/sets/72157639989591784
Ephemeral/Eternal: Before/After
In the spirit of mutual learning....
It seems accidents are my best teachers.
During my post processing of this bubble I noticed that the sky tones had become faintly banded. Not wanting this look usually, I was about to go back and attempt to correct it. But I paused...and saw how the banded lines echoed the swirling patterns of the bubble...and thought 'hmmmm...'
So here's what I can remember (sortof):
Canon SX10is
f5.6; 1/500; ISO 200.
1. Once open in PSE9 I could see it was pretty noisy. I didn't want to apply a low noise filter to the whole thing...as it would take out too much detail from the bubble...So using the quick selection tool at about 50% I selected only the sky and made a new layer from this selection (layer1).
2. On layer1 (just the sky) I think I applied a Gaussian Blur filter. It was still a bit noisy and I applied a Surface Blur filter. (Both found under filters>blur). At this stage in PSE9 I thought it looked ok and moved on. But later I saw that it was HERE that the two filters combined to make the swirly banded designs... faint but still visible.
3. Some of the filter processing from 2. drifted onto the bubble ...so I used the eraser at a low % to clean this up.
4. I went back to the original layer (the background layer) and selected just the bubble and made a new layer from this selection (layer2).
5. On the bubble (layer2) I used Enhance>Adjust Colour<Adjust Colour Curves...random playing around until I got an effect that I liked. This also gave the bubble a warm tone. So...
6. I went into layer1 (the sky) and applied a warming filter to make it look more natural with the bubble.
7. Back to the bubble layer...I made another layer from this (layer2 copy) and used dodge&burn to work it a bit more. The outer edge of the circle had become too dark so I dodge this back too. Every layer I use the transparency slider to adjust the amount of change I want to apply.
8. Sometime around here I saw the banded swirls in the sky...
Decided to try and enhance them and see what happened.
From the sky (layer1) I copied another layer (layer1 copy).
9. On layer1copy I used Enhance<Adjust Lighting<Shadows/Highlights & also Brightness/Contrast to make the swirls stand out more. They did!! A bit too much ;-) Some areas were too dark....and I thought it a bit too uniform. Soooo...
10. I used the dodge tool to lighten the dark areas (quite a lot) and then I used the Eraser to softly take out and tone back some large areas of marbling....especially just around the sphere.
One of the interesting things about the swirly banding is that every time I've tried to recreate it, it's come out differently...
Whew! Thats about it....and you probably prefer the original anyway ;-)
If you're interested I've put my before/after images into a pile: www.flickr.com/photos/birdcloud1/sets/72157639989591784