Thank you for the kind words, Laura - I'm glad you liked the photo.
Nature took care of most of how the image appears - the lighting was near-perfect. It was mid to late afternoon and the green of the water was reflecting nicely against the white hull of the ship producing an almost eerie glow. The clouds to the right of the ship represent the leading edge of the storm which was coming in fast, the clouds to the left weren't as thick and were letting more light through.
In PS CS3, I duplicated the image and ran it through an illustration action (specifically "Sheri's Sketch Action" from Action Central - www.atncentral.com). Back to the original image, I did a little "painting with light", burning in some shadows and dodging some highlights. Nothing too dramatic, always keeping my brush at no more than 15% opacity.
I combined the original and "illustrated" images, knocked back the illustrated layer to 25% opacity, and used a layer mask to paint back in the original, mostly everywhere except the ship itself.
Combined layers and sharpened.
As John Sieber (MT900spg) points out, it does have an HDR look to it, but I started with just one JPG image and went from there, so it's not a true high dynamic range image.
Thanks again for your comments - hope that helps. |
United States
Key West Cruise Ship (36) *
seneca77
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 297 W: 89 N: 369]](http://i1.treklens.com/misc/g-g-g.gif) (2097) |
