Tropical Colors

[JeffryZ]

I have been trying to experiment more with my photo processing. I use Photoshop CS3 but this can be done with other programs as well. It mostly involves layer masks. When you create an adjustment layer in photoshop, it will also have a mask. If you use your paintbrush and paint on the layer mask in black it will stop the adjustment from effecting that portion of the image. In some of these it is subtle, on the bananas, not so subtle. I do start with a channel swap in the first two.

These first two were made by combining three overlapping images into a panorama- vertical in the first one and horizontal in the second one. I use at least two layers each of hue/ saturation and selective color adjustment to try to make each change in the colors more subtle and to try to avoid posterization which can occur when you try to push the colors too far. I was starting to get that in the first two so I added a gausian blur to the background to cover it. I also use some dodging and burning.

Tree Group:


Green and Golden Pond (you can see some ducks here. If you look at the lower corner of the first one you can see a duck under a plant there too.

[JeffryZ]

Like the song by Donovan from the 1960's. Here I went sort of crazy with the editing. As I said before, I used layer masks to adjust one part of the picture but not all of it. The colors on the bananas came from a yellow slider in a hue/ saturation layer- I slid it all the way to the right. Yes, I got posterization of the colors, but decided in this case I really liked it. The flower part got more normal treatment and I blocked most of the effects from the leaves. Then I used some dodge and burn- in particularly to make the leaves much lighter than the rest so that the fruit and blossom stand out better. It was a cloudy day so the sky came out white instead of dark.


As a bonus, here is another one I did this week. Circuit City is an electronics store chain with a distinctly shaped building for all of their stores. The actual color is red. I liked the shape from where I was looking at it so I took a couple pictures. At the time I was thinking "darn- too bad the motorcycle is there" but now I think it helped the picture. To fit the theme, this one also has birds. Look on the roof. Yes, channel swap and some dodge and burn too.

[JeffryZ]

Here is the original on the banana plant- just resized straight out of the camera (it has been converted so no filters needed).