Before, after and once more

[pursuer]

It rained steady all day where I live so I spent a lot of time inside playing with photoshop and I came up with something great. This might be a well known tecnique but It's new to me so I thought I would share it. This is a photo I posted last year.

I used PS to darken the sky and lighten the foreground. I did this by selecting the sky and foreground seperatly and applying two seperate level adjustments. the problem with this is even after feathering the selection the area where the two sections meet never looks right. I had to use the blur tool to smooth things out a bit. Not only that getting an accurate selection is very time consuming. Here is the origonal:

What I came up with today dosen't require any selection at all. instead of doing a level adjustment I made a new level adjustment layer. I then adjusted it so the clouds looked right and ignored the forground. next I used the gradient tool to create a layer mask for the level adjustment layer. This was simply a vertical gradiant running from white to black. I did a normal level adjustment on the gradient so it would match the photo, white over the sky, black over the foreground and a smooth transition between the two. Next I duplicated the level adjustment layer and made the copy hidden. I merged the visiable layers then unhid the copy of the adjustment layer, inverted the layer mask and finally adjusted the level adjustment layer to lighten the forground. Here is the result:

This method is MUCH faster and also gives much better results. I hope someone finds this useful.

Edit: I forgot about the examples and tutorials section, maybe this should be there. If anyone feels this shouldn't be here feel free to move it.

 

[JonMikal]

i dont know what the hell you just described, but the end result is beautiful! i would love to know how you did this. i kept up until you started in on hiding this and that and then unhiding. i'll keep reading it and see if it makes more sense. if not, i may ask for a private tutorial in an email.

you images are definately inspirational. i am a fan of your work and always look for your posts! well done! :thumbup:

 

[pursuer]

I can see how that could be hard to follow, I will have to see about making a proper tutorial. In the mean time feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

you images are definately inspirational. i am a fan of your work and always look for your posts! well done! :thumbup:

Thank you very much Jon, That means alot coming from one of the best photographers on the forum.

 

[Contra|Brett|]

This is a very good ps tutorial. So please realize that this is a great way to do things if your stuck in the field w/o proper gear, but you should really be using a graduated neutral density filter for this effect.

 

[pursuer]

Thanks, I realise that but I don't own one yet so for now this will have to do

 

[Canoncan]

Nice shots, seems like a lot of work but they look good.

 

[pursuer]

Thanks, not counting the cloning I did on the last image it takes less then five minutes to do this, it's not as bad as it sounds. I posted a tutorial on how to do this in the howto section if anyone is interested, it is called "digital graduated ND filter"

 

[dalebe]

the whole image is really good, you've done a great job, i love these landscapes, that sky is a picture all on it's own, you could use that on other landscapes.

 

[John E.]

Thanks for the tutorial Pursuer. One day I too will have to fiqure out this masking and adjustment layer stuff, in the meantime I copied what you wrote. Good picture also.