A Long Trek Through The Woods With Photoshop

Sometimes you have to suffer for your craft.  A long hike over hill and dale on a hot day to get to just the right spot to get a unique image.  Then again, sometimes you stand on the side of the road and the shot is just there, as is the case in today's image.  Our recent trip to the Maine coast to shoot lighthouses we augmented the coast with a "return" trip through the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  We're sort of known for "creative" routes home.  We actually were leaving Lincoln NH on Route 93 south and saw an exit sign calling out Woodstock.  My razor sharp mind (obviously not) instantly flashed images of a farm scene down a road.  Of Main Street with some classic buildings.  Of covered bridges and mountain vistas all found in Woodstock ... Vermont.  Opps, wrong state.  It's not that Woodstock NH isn't a quaint little New England town, it's just that it isn't Woodstock VT.  As we were driving into town I saw today's image, pretty much the way you see it here (minus a fire hydrant by the door and a red flag out back).  Made a mental note to stop when we were headed back toward the highway.  Woodstock NH is kind of the Cinderella (per glass slippers) to Lincoln just to the north.  Where Lincoln has made an effort to be a tourist area, Woodstock is happy being the little, out of the way, sleepy town next door.  We wandered around town for a time, popped into a couple shops and found the local General Store (Lorri, you would have loved the HDR possibilities).  As we started out of town we saw a sign for Lost River.  We'd been there when our older son was still being carried on my arm.  That probably means to was close to forty years ago.  Had to go check it out.  It was closed for the season, but you could walk a couple of the trails.  Back to Woodstock and headed south out of town to get back to today's image.  Just a couple hand held shots and the rest was a little Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (LR4) and Adobe Photoshop CS6 (CS6) work.  To find out what that work was, Hit the "Read More".

As noted before, there was originally a bright red fire hydrant by the front door and a flag need the tree along the left side of the shot.  Things such as these are made for the Content Aware used with the Spot Healing Brush Tool (J) or the Patch Tool (J).  For the hydrant the Patch Tool worked great.  Just draw a loose Selection around the object and move the selection to an area with something close to what you want to use for fill.  The Patch Tool, being Content Aware (clicked on in the options bar) analyzes what you've picked as a typical fill and does it's magic to fill in over the offending object.  It'll work 90% of the time and if it does completely correct what you're trying to do, it'll get you a lot closer than you were 30 seconds ago. 

Another tool nested under the keystroke J is the Spot Healing Brush Tool.  With a properly sized brush tip, one swipe (usually) and the flag was gone.

Today's image did take a trip to Niksoftware's Color Efx Pro for bumping up the colors.  That just involves playing around with their presets and making minor modifications to which ever ones tickle your fancy.