A nice little effect!

July 9, 2012

I travel a lot and photography not only complements my desire to travel but also provides me a canvas to relish the memories from each trip. In one such trip I had taken a few “off the hook” pictures, one of which was of my fellow railfan – Raj Kumar Sharma. My intention was to depict his enthusiasm towards rail photography. The other day he asked me, “can you change the color of the image and make it more natural?”. The image had a uneasy hint of orange and I thought why not add another angle to this picture as well.

Where do I start? Of course, the natural winner was Adobe Photoshop and in all these years, this neat program has been a life saver for me. So here is a step-by-step guide to the final outcome.

Photoshop-ped

First I opened the original image in Photoshop. I created 2 more layers so that I can play safe and not lose my original image. Created layers by Selecting the image (CTRL A) – Copy (CTRL C) – Paste (CTRL V)

The Three Layers

I will use Layer 2 for all my experiments.

Layer-2

Next I play around with shadow or highlights. Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight
This is how it looks.

Shadow or Highlight

You can see how using Shadow/Highlight has made the image sharper and clearer.

TIP: If you increase the amount of shadows to more than 50% then it will produce a washed out effect. For this picture, I don’t need a washed out effect.

At this point you can increase the input levels for RGB. Image>Adjustments>Levels. It should be as below.

Increasing RGB Levels

Next, I create a copy of Layer 2. I can do that by selecting Layer 2 and drag it to the bottom of the layers palette to the “create a new layer” tool.

Drag the layer and bring it here.

Automatically, it created a copy named “Layer 2 copy“. Now I am going to focus all my attention to this layer only.

Note: Make sure Layer 2 is also visible.

The eye is the sign of visibility

Now my intention is to show everyone what my friend is really trying to capture i.e: the subject. In this case, the subject is a train on a curve. Thankfully, I had a taken a picture of the train on the curve as well. So I open the picture in Photoshop and copy the image into the existing file and it becomes “Layer 3“.

Train on a curve

I need to now make the image smaller and place it into the lense of the camera. First, I decrease the opacity of Layer 3 to 50%.

Increase or decrease the opacity here

Then I reduce the size of the image: Edit>Transform>Scale
I make it small enough to fit it into the lens. Since the opacity is 50%, I can see both the images.

Make the image smaller.

Once I have fitted most of the image; I use the eraser tool to erase the parts of the image that are not required.

I increase the opacity of Layer 3 to 100%. Once this is done, I look at the image. I still need to make it look natural. There is too much orange in the picture. I select Layer 2 copy.

Go to: Image>Adjustments>Photo Filter
I select Color #221c14 and click OK. I move the slider to a position where I feel that the orange effect has been reduced and the picture has a natural feel to it.