PLaces You Can't Go Without Photoshop

Click on image to enlarge

Today's image definitely qualifies as a place you can't visit without, at least, some knowledge of Adobe Photoshop (PS).  Why?  Basically, it's because the earth doesn't curve that way.  The horizon of an image can do many things.  It can be tipped (a big no no).  It can show the sweep of the land as in a arête along a mountainside with an apparent (but not real) slope to the surface.  Using an extreme wide angle lens the horizon can be bowed either up or down, but it can't be bowed both up and down.  In any case, today's image isn't what it seems.  To find out how many shots were used in today's image, hit the "Read More".


What a shock.  I screwed around with multiple images to come up with what you see today.  It goes back to the weekend before last when we were out and I was playing around with my nice, new fisheye lens.  Something that happens with a fisheye lens is abnormal curvature if the lens is tipped off the centerline of your field of view.  On the centerline the horizon appears to be "normal".  The lens is a rectilinear fisheye when used with a cropped sensor camera such as a Nikon D7100.  On a full frame camera you'd get the circular image common in many fisheye images. 

Tipping the camera up gives a "curvature of the earth" sort of look.  Tipping the camera down gives a "bowl" effect.  Based on today's image, combining the two ends up as an "S" shaped horizon.  Today's base image (the background) is the same shot taken with the camera tipped down in one frame and up in the next.  If you look closely you can see the same lakes on both sides of center.  The images were overlapped in PS and a Layer Mask applied.  A soft black Brush (B) was used on the Mask to blend the edge at the overlap.  A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was Clipped to the right side image to matchup the colors. 

The house is a third image taken with the fish and laid over the right background image.  The grassy area was a totally different color from the background, so another Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was Clipped to the grounds of the house to bring it into the same color space.  Once all the elements were placed (the two backgrounds and the house) the whole thing was brought back to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (LR) for finishing.

In LR the rocks around the coy pond and the façade of the house were lightened to make them the center of attention.  The roof was made darker and richer and the flowers were brightened.  The trees to the right of the house were lightened slightly to match them to the trees on the bowl side of the image. 

Selective Sharpening was applied to various parts of the image to move the viewers eye through the image.  Going places with PS provides an opportunity to explore the creative side of PS.