Mary Hinsen, BPSA
About the Image(s)
I have managed an image for March! I will still be in and out as my treatment progresses, but will do what I can.
1/250sec, 62mm, f/7.1, ISO125.
So, what can you photograph when you're confined to bed? Anything around you of course! This image is of a table - I quite liked the juxtaposition of hard, scratched stainless and wood grain. I thought it might be a good image to add to my texture library.
I didn't like that I had a soft, out of focus corner, and wanted to amplify the hardness of the metal against the softer woodgrain. I opened in Photoshop, copied the background layer and changed the blend mode to Vivid Light. I then inverted the layer and applied the clipping mask. I then applied a surface blur, adjusting the sliders for the amount of detail I was looking for.
I copied the background layer again and applied the diffuse filter, ticking anisotropic. I grouped my working layers and changed the group to Overlay blend mode.I masked so this effect applied only to the metal.
I improved the tonal range of the woodgrain by duplicating the background again, moving to the top, adding a clipped B/W adjustment layer, inverting, and adding a Gaussian blur. I grouped these together and changed the blend mode to Overlay. I masked to apply to the woodgrain only.
I tried to sharpen the soft corner using a high pass filter, but ended up cropping it out instead. I added a curves layer finally to slightly darken selective areas.
Not sure if I've overdone the effect, but it's been a process I've been playing around with, so at least I have had more practice with it!