well, when i first saw this photo two things popped up in my mind. first, the trees are all too dark. and second...if it's going to be a winter photo, then lets make the river icy. of course, i don't really know how to do something like that, but i thought i'd give it a try.
anyways, as for the steps.
to make the trees lighter i simply went to Shadow/Highlights and played around with it till you can see the individual trees on the left hand side a bit better.
the rest went as follows:
- adjusted hue/saturation to bring out the green
- made a selection of the river
- copied to new layer
- painted this selection white and changed the blending mode
- added layer mask to this selection and used the radial gradiant tool in an attempt to make water around wood look less icy
- made another layer with current selection
- painted white again and used filter>add noise (tick the monochromatic selection)
- used motion blur on the added noise to make the ice more "realistic" looking
- also made a selection of the sky the same way it was shown in POP Photo (april 08 issue)
- played with hue/saturation to change the color a bit
- also changed my foreground and background colors picked from sky, then used a linear gradiant over the "īce" to try to tie in the sky with the ground
oh, just noticed i forgot to mention that at some point i used the liquify tool a bit on the reflection on the "ice"
hahah...that was a lot of steps and of course it's not very good, but it was fun playing with it. sorry i don't have more exact instuctions as i was doing a lot of ctl+alt+z"-ing while trying to induce the right effect.
