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That Old World Feeling - part 2 of 1 2 3
by Jim Chamberlain Published 01/04/2006
4. I have a collection of skies and clouds that I use to add interest to photographs that have a boring white sky. The weather doesn't always cooperate when traveling. My collection of stock images includes skies from different times of the day, cloud patterns and perspectives (foreground and background). This gives me the option to choose a sky that fits the lighting and perspective of the target image.
5. I often times use the Dodge and Burn tool to reshape the light patterns in the image by darkening shadow areas, adding highlights to direct the flow of the image. 6. Remember to save the file. Give it a name that means something to you about the image. Now duplicate the background layer three times. Name the layer just above Background "Sunshine", the next layer name "Monday Morning" and the top layer "Old Photo".
7. From your Filter menu go to NIK Color Effects Pro and apply the appropriate filter to each layer. There are various settings within each filter. Move the sliders around, back and forth to the extremes. Find a setting that appeals to you. There is no right or wrong here. Even though I have set up this formula of three filters, there is plenty of room to add your own personality to the mix. This is the nice thing about digital tools. You can take another person's idea, add your own flavor to it and come up with your own taste.
8. After you apply the filters, adjust the blending mode on the layers Monday Morning and Sunshine to Luminosity. Set Old Photo to screen mode. 9. Set the Opacity sliders to taste by adjusting to get a blend that fits your mood. The Old Photo layer will be adjusted down very low minimizing its effect. On some images I might even turn off the Old Photo layer.
10. Save the file with all the layers and save another version with the layers flattened. On the flattened layer I add Curves and levels adjustment layers to make any tone and colour adjustments. I make it a habit not to colour correct too much before the creative filters are applied. As described above I do a little global correction in the camera RAW plug-in but only to a visually clean state on a balanced monitor.
The filters will alter colour therefore I save critical colour and tone for the end of the process.
11. Now it's time to make my first test print and modify the adjustment layers as needed. I can increase the mood by painting in a little more red or yellow correction into areas where it helps.
12. Print your image on a nice off-white textured watercolour paper. My favorite art papers are
Hahnemuhle German Etching and Arches Infinity. I print with the Epson 10000 series printers with pigment inks.
13. This is where I make my final cropping decisions. I decide on the final image size and aspect ratio. I liked the first crop I made giving room to the foreground and sky areas but I decided I also wanted a square crop - probably from my 35 years of shooting with a Hasselblad. Rather than crop again as I wanted to keep everything that was there, I enlarged the canvas size and stretched the image with Free Transform on the horizontal axis. Stretching an image can add that extra touch of impact.
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1st Published 01/04/2006
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