Igot to messing around with some of my Sydney photos and came up with these two treatments of the Opera House, taken on a cloudy gray morning. I like how simple it was to create two different looks from the same image using just the tools in a few action packs.
*I should mention that both of these were done with my Handy Actions & Portrait Lab action sets in Photoshop Elements.
On the first image, I used the Depth of Field - linear action, and did some touch up on the mask it creates. I re-drew the gradient and followed that up with some spot touch-up on the mask with a soft round brush, bringing the focus to the people on the steps with the large structure looming in the background.
I selected the foreground with the rectangular marquee, then I ran the New Layer from Selection action to put it all by itself. I darkened it a bit, and increased the fade with a Gaussian Blur.
Then I opened up the Framer set (available in the Graffishop), and ran the Elegant Outline (White 2) action to create the frame. Finally, I added the text in the lower right corner with the font Y2K Neophyte (available from DaFont.com).
The final result looked (to me) a bit dark and ominous - the little people scurrying about in front of this looming menace in the background. The opera house is blurred intentionally for a bit of drama and an implication that it's always lurking. Could be a symbol for ____________ (that's a blank for you to fill in....)
(Whew! How's that for symbolism and freshman interpretation!)
For the second take of the same image, I wanted a lighter look and feel to the same image, so I changed the Depth of Field action to put the focus on the building, making it almost cathedral-like. The people don't really play a role in this version - they're secondary to the structure, so they're in the blurry foreground.
The monotonous gray sky didn't work for the look I was after, so I created a new layer and drew a gradient from top to about halfway down, using two shades of blue for my foreground and background colors. I rough-selected the sky with the magic wand from the original background layer, and with the gradient layer selected, ran the Layer Mask - Reveal Selection action from Handy Actions 2.5. Then, clicking the gradient thumbnail in the Layers palette, I ran a Motion Blur filter, along with a bit of liquify to mix it up a bit. I also added a Hue/Saturation adjustment and boosted the saturation a bit.
Next, I created another layer at the top and ran the Clouds filter. I made a selection of the sky area again and ran the Layer Mask - Reveal Selection action again so the clouds only show up in the sky. I changed the blend of the gradient layer to Multiply for the final look.
To keep it light, I figured a white frame would look best, so I ran the "Elegant Outline (Black 2)" action from B&W Lab. (It's kind of a misnomer to call it "Elegant Black 2", but if you look closely, you'll see that the fine line frame is black surrounded by white. The opposite is true of the "Elegant White" & "Elegant White 2" actions - they have a fine white line surrounded by black.)
*Also, the difference between Elegant White/Black 1 & 2 is that the "2" versions have the fine line slightly inset into the image, while the regular one has the fine line flush with the image's edges.
I finished this one off with the same text & font from above, only in black for this image.
What do you think?
