Blacksmith

[ssocal]

Blacksmith making a souvenir, making a horseshoe into a heart.

 

[AncientSnapper]

Wow - that's fun - I hope you dont mindm but I think we could enhance this image along these lines to get more impact

pity it is a bit blurred with the slow sync flash, but you have certainly captured the mood nicely.

 

[ssocal]

Much better, I'm still a beginner at photoshop, so I must ask, what did you do?

Thanks in advance.

 

[AncientSnapper]

I'm still learning too and I find it extremely helpful to see other people's pictures and try playing with them. I have gathered a number of photoshop actions (you can download them from my web site) that help images - for your image, I started by making the image a bit more contrastly using Levels and then used the LocalContrast Action which brings out detail in non-contrasty images. I then added a bit of Lab saturation. Finally there was a fair bit of noise, especially in his trousers, so I used NeatImage to remove it.

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that post-processing is almost as important as get the shot right in the first place - so practising on lots of different images helps one learn quite fast. Have a look at how I did my "Wow" picture to see what I mean - I started with a dull picture and managed to change it into something quite interesting.

Good luck