About the Image(s)

Last year, we took a wonderful tour on an old fashioned trolley, of the waterfalls along the Columbia River. This is one of them.

I did a lot of experimentation on this image, so I’ll try to document just the layers that contributed to the final product.

I applied NIK Color Efex Pro > Darken/Lighten Center a couple of times, placing the waterfall at the center and darkening the periphery. The waterfall was too blown out. I wanted more detail in it, so I took parts of another waterfall image and superimposed it over the waterfall in this image. I put that layer at Darken blending mode and 46% opacity.

I used the adjustment layer Selective Color to bring out more green, darken the whites and lighten the neutrals. And then I merged up.

There were some bright spots on the greens, so I added a dark green Solid Color

adjustment layer with a blending mode of Color Burn at 100%. I turned its layer mask black (click mask, ‘x’) Then I painted white on the mask, over the bright spots.

Merging up, I went into NIK Color Efex Pro again and applied a Graduated Neutral Density preset.

Back in PS, I felt a bit nuts and wanted to try something new . So I tried Filter > Pixelate > Pointillize to make the image look like a point painted picture. I went back to NIK Color Efex Pro, and applied the following presets: Cross Balance to add blue to the mix; Darken/Lighten Center to darken the sides and bring the viewer’s eye to the center waterfall; ProContrast to enhance contrast; Vignette Blur to add a dark-blur to the outer edges of the image.

I wanted a frame and edges more deeply darkened, so I created a new blank layer and painted a dark blue rim with a large soft brush on the new layer, and then set the blending layer at Color Burn. Secondly, I enlarged the canvas size to make a solid frame in a dark grey-blue color.

That’s it! Hope your eyes are drawn into the depth of the image, along the path to the waterfall!!