Last week I wanted to create a night effect, but the results, at least from my point of view were not entirely satisfactory. The original view of the river is very greenish and I wasn’t able to get rid of that green, in fact as one viewer stated correctly, the river looked a bit toxic (which I’m afraid it probably is.) Another reader suggested working on the water with Lightroom, a program I’ve never used before, to work on that selected area.
I do have a copy of Photoshop on my computer from my son’s school days, so I tried to work on the selected area with that program. Unfortunately I missed a passage and the whole photograph came out like this:
I went back to Picasa 3 with the results … and started playing with the filters … softening, sharpening, then softening again then adding a second border and finally I decided to try sepia and see what came up:
An interesting effect but not what I wanted so, I sharpened again and then cropped the borders, tuned towards cool (blue) sharpened, hit Ortonish, softened, added some fill lights, re-tuned again towards cool and added some shadows and then I added a new border this is the result which I named Charon’s Boat, this week’s process 3:
Wk 3
haunting vision
Charon rows along the Styx
– eternal night
G.s.k. ’14
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- Original
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- Wk One
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- Wk two
Linked to The One Four Challenge
Through the Eye of Bastet 
Fan-tas-tic!! That is extremely moody, evocative, disturbing even, and your title of Charon’s boat just adds a dimension
Wow .. thanks Sue!
This is the sort of thing I like…?
Tell the truth … so do I 😉 wish I could do this more often!
😀
I like this one Georgia, it looks really good, I like the feeling you have given the image, or the boat.
Thanks Leanne .. a fine compliment coming from you!
This one is really something, looks great. And all those tweaks you must have learnt heaps 🙂
Quite a bit in fact … but not what I wanted to learn but I had a lot of fun! Unfortunately I’ve been busy and haven’t had time to sit down with a tutorial …
Ah, those tutorials ! I need a tutorial to explain the tutorial 🙂 so it takes me quite a while to grasp something new, and then again sometimes I do something that I like but can’t remember what I did to get there.
lol … welcome to my world … which was why I wrote this post right after finishing my experiments … and yes I find the tutorials difficult to follow …
Oh yes I do agree. I love this version Georgia – Fantastic!!!!!
What a great week you’ve had – yes bet you learned lots 😀
Oodles and lots more to learn … thanks Robyn for this great idea …. 🙂
Magical!
Thanks!
I really love this week. Much more mysterious and it really does look like Charon’s Boat. 😀
I agree, I too like this week’s edit very much 🙂
Nice treatment, really brings out the textures and tones in the boat and puts the focus of the image there, and gets rid of the distracting background. Great job!
Thanks a lot … I’m thinking it won’t be easy to beat this one …
Everyone likes different things, and I don’t think of this as a competition but a learning and growth experience. As an example, I have had PS for over a year but until I started Robyn’s Challenge I HAD NEVER USED IT!!!
Very true and I agree the challenge is really great and I’ve had PS on my computer since my son was in high school … and never touched it until last week.
I think it is so interesting, that you tried something and then came out with a totally different version than you were expecting. This is why I love this challenge. It pushes you to continue to work on something, and you learn so much.
This is a beautiful process. The mood is intriguing, it tells a story and makes your eye search the image for some clues. Great work!
Thanks Carrie … I agree, the great thing about this challenge it the experimenting, which is a fantastic way to learn new tricks!
This is fabulous…I love the dark tones…and the high contrast
Thanks .. it was interesting finding that … and thnks to the challenge, I’ll remember how I did it!
What an interesting effect and so much experimentation! I will go against the flow here and say I am not a fan of this one. But that’s just me. The main thing is exploring and learning!
Thanks … the experimenting was fun and I enjoyed the result … though I know quite a few people who prefer photos to be closer to reality … thanks for your comment.
I love what you’ve done with this — in making it both sepia-toned and softer-edged you’ve really edged it into a dream-like realm, which the title really emphasizes! Wow!
And yeah — you didn’t learn what you *wanted* to learn through this process — but you still learned a lot and that’s half the battle, right?
This is a great change — very awesome!
Thanks Jen … a little bird told me I might be getting an electronic drawing board, which I can also use for editing, for Christmas … might be easier to edit with a pen rather than a mouse! I did learn a lot and it was really absorbing, had a great time.
Oh, now that sounds like a COOL toy! Hope you do indeed get it for Christmas — and it’ll be wonderful to see what you can do with it.
I do too … seems like my son picked up on my hints … been hinting for over a year now … hopefully I’ll be able to use the darn thing
it is a haunting vision!! Beautiful and the poem!! It’s a perfect boat for the Styx!!
Thanks a lot Cybele … glad you stopped by!
This is a perfect boat for the River Styx… nice version. I’m glad that even though you didn’t get what you wanted you did get an image you liked and learned a lot too. If you get to trying to de-green that water again, you might try making the water grayscale then putting a color over it… I tried several different things until I was able to change the color of the elephant in my photo, grayscale really made a difference. Good luck with whatever you try for next week’s version. 🙂
That sounds like a very good suggestion … what I also have to learn though is how to isolate that portion of the photo so everything isn’t affected by what I’m doing … I just need some quiet time to sit down with my photos and work until I get it right … which I never seem to get!