gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

I was going through some of my older images and found this pictire of a house that is along the Hana Hwy on Maui, very near the town of Hana. The light was terrible - mid day overcast in that spot. I decided to add some interest to it. It is a work in progress. I am going to add some items of interest and polish up the lighting.

Original day shot - dead light
Attached file:
(Download)

Processed night version
Attached file:
(Download)

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Interesting post processing. The rays of light would normally be associated with those of the sun, and the processed photo would seem to indicate moonlight should be the source.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Nice touch with the light from the windows. A touch of blue would suit the light from the sky, giving the impression of moonlight and night-time.

Desert Gecko Loc: desert southwest, USA

Very nice. Just two days ago I downloaded a couple YouTube tutorials on how to turn a ho-hum daytime photo into a night photo. I also downloaded one showing how to create light beams.

So I guess what I'm saying is stay out of my head - this was my idea, darn it! Hehe, they say great minds think alike! But I was actually thinking of adding a night sky/Milky Way to some of my images.

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

The possibilites are endless. Another benefit of spending time on this is it really hones and expands your PS skills. PS is so vast it really requires a commitment of time to avoid stagnation of skills. I also found this whole compositing field prompted me to get my brushes, styles, workspace, etc., organized to speed it up so more time is spent creating instead of hunting and scolling for things. Go for it!

Desert Gecko Loc: desert southwest, USA

I admit I'm very much a novice, but I am just starting to feel comfortable with basic editing -- in Lightroom. I use PS just when I send things over from LR to merge, use a Topaz plugin, etc., then hightail it back to LR. That is slowly changing, though, as I've downloaded quite a collection of YouTube tutorials that I've sorted by topic to work through offline. That and a Serge Ramelli series I have should bring me up to speed. I'll consider a topic, rather, a technique I want to learn, then I'll get the tute for it, as I did with the day-to-night. But first, I'm about to spend time getting a handle on layers and masks which are so useful for other techniques. Again, nice work - I hope to be able to do so well some day.

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

Layers and masks are crucial to compositing along with blending, gradients, selections and color grading. I have been using PS off and on since the mid 90’s. When Lightroom came along I found my PS time reduced by 90% or more. Skils get rusty or forgotten when not used so I decided to jump back in to retrieve and gain new skills. I also Youtibe as a go to resource. There are many "PS manipulation" artists there and some are very active not to mention highly skilled. They set the bar pretty high.

Desert Gecko Loc: desert southwest, USA

Indeed, and for about any topic imaginable. For example, I have lots of old digital photos from point & shoots and even some from my first DSLR before I started shooting RAW + jpeg. Some of them are very, very nice photos but need that something extra. I edited one such jpeg not long ago in LR and wow! Even a jpeg can be made to look pretty good. Then just a couple weeks ago I edited another jpeg thinking it was the RAW file (I still don't know why LR let me import it when it usually just imports the RAW). I got it looking pretty decent then noticed it was the jpeg only when I went to export it. Okay, no biggie, because I really liked how it came out and saved the settings as a preset for similar pics, of which I have many from that outing. I tried to apply them to the RAW and it looked horrible! So I went through similar steps with the RAW file and got similar, but better (especially noise), results.

I learned two things from this: First, much can be done even with a jpeg; and second, processing a jpeg and processing a RAW file are two different ball games. So I looked on YouTube and downloaded several tutes specifically for processing jpegs.

By the way, to download YouTube videos either on a Windows (and presumably Mac) machine or with a mobile device (not with the YouTube app, but with a browser), simply delete everything in the location bar (the url) before "youtube" and type ss then enter. It'll take you to a Web site called "Save From" where it'll process your request and present you with download options. Default is 720p, so quality is decent. My son taught me this trick quite some time ago, saying it's what all the kids in his high school use. I'll type an example of a day-to-night LR tute I mentioned earlier:

original url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCvZvJcbbo
change it to: ssyoutube.com/watch?v=UVCvZvJcbbo then enter, or go.