Autumnal Colours with 'Violet Dream'

[Richard Briggs Profile]

For those in the Northern Hemisphere you may find the Violet Dream effect subtly used (or not so subtle) is useful for enhancing those autumnal shots. See below....

[andrewb2012 Profile]

Hi Richard - I really like the 'Violet Dream' effect - used it a number of times. When applied to original images such as yours - the result could be described as ethereal. Both the subtle and full on versions are appealing.

Just a thought! What about replacing the 'blown-out' sky with a SUBTLE sky effect from within SPE, then apply the Violet Dream effect - remember that a bit of reflected sky color would be shown in the water too. This is not meant as a criticism, just an idea to enhance a delightful set of images.

Would be nice to view larger versions say about 700 - 800 pixels wide. You can show up to three images in each posted comment.

Have a good day!

Regards,

Andrew

[Richard Briggs Profile]

Hi Andrew,

I havn't mastered sky effects where there's lots of fine foliage. If there's an easy way I'd like to know. Or is it a question of a lot of careful masking?

Richard

[andrewb2012 Profile]

Hi Richard,

When the sky is predominantly one color and without clouds, it is generally quite easy to create a mask over trees, although sometimes you have to make little adjustments. Basically, place either the 'Find Soft Edge' or 'Find Hard Edge' brush in an area that has only the sky color. Now hold down the 'Shift' key down (and continue to hold down) and brush over the trees, branches and leaves. Hopefully, only the sky bits between the leaves etc. will be selected. I'd advise starting with the 'Find Hard Edge' brush and maybe increase the size a little from the default setting. Sometimes you have to replace the brush on another sky area to capture fiddly bits that might remain - if so just follow the previous procedure. If the hard brush is not working for you, then try creating your mask using the 'Find Soft Edge' and see what happens. If you include leaves or parts of a tree in your mask, these can be removed by tweaking. In this case click on the 'Erase From Selection' button and used your brush as described above, but this time placing the centre of the brush exactly on a leaf or branch. Hold down the 'Shift' key again and brush over the little bits you want to remove from the sky mask. It might be best to decrease the size of your Erase Brush for this purpose. The brushes pick up the color differences, so if your leaves appear green and the branches appear brown in your image, then only green or brown should be removed - the closer the colors are to each other the harder it can be to create a perfect mask. You may have to do the procedure for leaves and branches separately.

Note, where an effect is only making SUBTLE changes it might be fine just to approximate your mask without a requirement for perfection.

You can select different masking styles by selecting particular icons shown under the 'Display Selection As:' menu and that gives you a variety of mask styles to play with.

Hope I've explained this procedure well enough - it is hard to put it into words alone.

Good luck if you try this out - once mastered, it will help you make more complex masks for a variety of situations including separating hair (in a portrait) from the background.

Regards,

Andrew

[Arwin Profile]

Hi Richard,

I agree with Andrew to upload a bigger image, it's hardly to see the effect but what I see adds indeed a nice warm autumn feeling to your image!

Thanks for sharing!
Arwin

[Phelon Profile]

Hi Richard, Andrew, Arwin and everyone else,

First, I got behind over the weekend with a heavy rain and wind storm that kept us from our cable TV and internet service for nearly two days. Then I had great news from purchasing a "5-Day Photography Bundle" for $89 and worth $2000 (38GB of downloads); the good news was that 10% of your $89 went to 4 different charities and with photographers purchasing the bundle, the total amount collected for charity was over $200,000--that's a whopping good deed, indeed.

I was really pleased to see the help here given to Richard. Yes, everything suggested was spot on by Andrew and Arvin. I thought I would bring up a past SPE posting by me to show how to make a sky look like you replaced it, and then went on to show how you can make those suttle sky changes (and water) as Andrew suggested. I try to show how refining the brush size, as Arvin brings out about masking your sky--then using a couple of slider controls to bring out the clouds, if any, and make the sky look realistic. This was with a picture that had lots of wires and antennas.

Here's the post: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1518

I hope others here got the 5-Day Bundle. Serge Ramelli also sold $2000 of his Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials for $300 (about 9 GB) on a 5-day special. Then, as many of you know, onOne sent out their new Suite 9 with 7 applications. So, I've got plenty of studying to do.

It takes practice to get the masking under control. I used to have things like tree branches and pipes on roof tops look silver--I worked and finally got it right to where I could show others.

Hopefully someday I can buy a Leaf camera with a huge digital back.

You all have a great Winter.

Warm regards,
Phelon

[Richard Briggs Profile]

Thanks for the info re masking branches etc. I've tried it and will apply it to the next 'project' photo. Not this one as it was just a reminder to those trying to get autumnal colours on a dull day when nothing seems to emit any colour other than dull greens and browns.

Richard