Ok Zeitgeist, here is what I learned today..

[Raymond J Barlow]

About 10 hours messin with PS, and I took a mess like the first pic, and landed the new one below it.. gotta say it was fun, although I will come back to this pic in the future, when I have learned part of the other 99.9 % of PS of which I will never master!

all comments welcome! thanks for looking!

 

[ferny]

That is a huge difference! I'm shocked you found that shade of blue in there.
How comes you chopped the top off? I assume it's because it went almost white from your fiddling. It's a shame, I liked those clouds.

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

Ya Ferny, I am not too happy with it, but I will learn more about this PS, and give this pic some life one day!

 

[Zeitgeist]

Raymond, what I have found about Photoshop is that there are always 17 different ways of doing anything and the appplication has more of a learning cliff than a learning curve. If I may make a suggestion, learn to work with layers ASAP. With layers you can control different parts of your photo while preserving others unchanged. You will find that duplicating layers and selective erasing to be a powerful tool. If Ferny's surmise is correct you could duplicate the picture and make your lightening and contrast changes on the upper, floating level, and then use the eraser tool at an opacity of about, oh, 20% to lightly and slowly erase the clouds that have burned out and let the unchanged bottom layer show through until it suits your eye.

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

ya, for sure!! i will get it some day.. the whole layers thing messes with my mind! I was trying it yesterday, but no success.. I ave someone who can walk me through it, I just need to get my laptop back from service.. heat sink and fan are toast.

thanks again for your help, I will get the layer concept soon!

 

[Zeitgeist]

Raymond, anything I can do to help, just ask.

Layers get simple if you just think of them as clear acetate sheets with the image painted on. They are completely separate from each other and what you do to one does not affect the others. That gives you terrific control over your image.

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

Thanks Z-!! Maybe we can meet on yahoo messenger, and you can talk me through it., my yahoo id is [email protected] It's a racing tag, and I manage a online nascar racing club. Just add me if you have it. thanks!

 

[AIRIC]

Raymond, I will go to layer school with you One of these days I will have to learn it as well.

Eric

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

cool Airic, if you have yahoo, we can all meet there! or msn, I have both.

 

[JonMikal]

i really do like what you've ended up with and my hat is off to you. the image does pop better, but, to be honest, i'm a bit partial to the original sky for the moment.

 

[Zeitgeist]

Sorry gentlemen, but I am on a Mac and iChat and it doesn't seem to want to talk to Yahoo IM. If you want, though, we can work through the forums here if that would be all right with management. Layers are easy and wonderful once you get used to them.

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

Thanks JonMikal.. I am having trouble with this monitor.. i usually do mmy editing on my emachimes desktop, but it's in for service. this is a 17" LCD connected to a p4 2.4G Pc, and the pics look fine when I open them with the ms preview, but when I use my editing software, they look soooooooooo dark.. i end up guessing, and trail and error.. I need to get past this before i move to the next level.

Z- I have a private voice chat software and server that we use for racing, you can download it if you like, they do have it for mac and windows.. it's called teamspeak you can look at the website off our main page of our racing website.. www.crtz.homestead.com

anyone is welcome to join us

 

[Zeitgeist]

I have used Teamspeak on my PC when I was flying combat missions in a flight sim. Let me see if I can get it operational on the Mac. It will take a couple of days, I work for a University and we are converting over to the summer schedule and things are a little confused right now. And isn't it amazing the difference different monitors can make when you look at your work? It never ceases to amaze me.