Of the 250 posts that have appeared on this blog I believe 248 or 249 have been accompanied by an image and some explanation about what was done to it. I thought it was about time to take a look at today’s image. After all, it’s been the “bookends” of the banner from day one. It’s an old shot, taken with an old camera on an outing with my granddaughter. She’ll be entering high school in September and the image comes from a time before she had started school. So, it’s an oldie. It has been updated, so you might want to check out the explanation of what was done. I’d like to thank everyone who has been reading the blog for any length of time. I’m surprised by where in the world it’s popular, but it has been read in 85 countries and every state in the US except South Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska (where are the Palins when you need them ;-) ). There’s only been one visitor from Delaware (guess Biden’s been busy too), but, in general there is a “following” in almost every state. If you’ve enjoyed the postings here at “The Kayview Gallery” how about either leaving a comment or sending an email telling me what you like or asking for information on some Photoshop subject. One of the things I’m most gratified by is the sites that refer people to the blog. The sixth, seventh and ninth most common sites that people come from are those written by Dave Cross, Scott Kelby and David Ziser. Joe McNally’s comes in at number thirteen. The blog has been picked up by www.alltop.com and http://www.blogsurfer.us/ . It’s been “tweeted” about, it’s shown up on people’s Facebook pages and has enjoyed pretty good “word of mouth” distribution. Knowing people are reading and sending emails make continued writing a pleasure. Now, back to today’s image. If you’d like to know what was done to “update” the image, hit the read more.
It’s been cropped. The original had the horse trainer about in the center of the image. He’s been moved to a more powerful spot. The spot David Ziser calls nodal point four (the crosspoints created by the Rule of Thirds).
His jacket has been given more definition with the use of the Dodge and Burn Tools (O). It took a trip through Adobe Photoshop CS5’s HDR Toning applet (Image/Adjustments/HDR Toning). I didn’t want to go too crazy with the HDR Toning and brought it up just enough to give greater definition to the horse’s musculature and brighten up the graphic on the edge of the ring. A stagehand was removed from the lower right hand corner.
The actual “star of the show” in today’s image (in my opinion) is the Smudge Tool (no keyboard shortcut) Its in a Tool Group along with the Blur and Sharpen Tools. The lip of the ring in the lower right hand was “fixed” through the use of smudging. Any straight (or gently curved) lines that were a little messed up were hit with the Smudge Tool to create a better looking edge. The Smudge Tool, used at less than ten pixels, pulls fuzzy lines into apparent sharpness.
The image was sharpened in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3. LR3 was also used to put a subtle vignette around the whole image.
It’s not a bad up date and a way to celebrate the 250th posting on the blog. Everyone take care and keep those emails comes in.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment