Derelict Boat - Before and After

[monkeygirl123]

BEFORE



AFTER



I have so much to learn with Photoshop and I'm not sure that everything I did is what I should have done (or even the correct or easist way of doing it) however I've put this up here anyway as a couple of you have asked how I did it.

First of all, I cropped the photo to lose a bit of the bridge on the right.

Next I applied adjustment layers in levels, vibrancy, saturation and contrast. (I've only just started using adjustment layers.)

I used selective colour, playing with all the sliders until I got what I wanted, but the most obvious was increasing the blacks, whites and the neutrals and decreasing the reds etc.

I looked at the photo agian and noticed all the distractions - the things in the water, the car on the bridge, the pylon in the background and the small red pillar above the fence. I removed these using the content aware fill. This is in CS5, so if you don't have it, you could just clone it out.

Next, I changed the hue. It was all a bit orangy/brown to start with so I made it a bit more yellow.

After all of that, I decided that the sky was just too flat and horrid, so I attempted something I'd never done before. I opened up another of my pictures which had a decent sky in it and copied and pasted it onto my picture using overlay. The trouble was, all of the the picture was showing through, not just the sky, so I did a mask and erased the bits I didn't want. Then I decreased the opacity so that it blended a little better.

The sky was still a little dark but there was light showing on top of the boat, and that light had to come from somewhere! So I did a render/lighting effects/directional and placed the cursor in the cloud so that it just hit the top of the boat.

Finally, I used the high pass filter to sharpen it.

And that was that!

There are a lot of things here I'm not happy with....the main one being the light in the water under the boat which looks a bit odd to me. But I enjoy playing. For all the newbies out there, I'd reccommend that you put a bad photo into your post processing programme and give yourself a couple of hours to just play arond and see what all the buttons do. It's such good fun!

Thanks for reading

[lemonjenny]

Great before & after! The finished product is a little green, but I still really like it!

[Father Bob]

I like this photo and what you've done with it. The tone change really makes a difference.
I might have removed the rest of the bridge. It's a little distracting, as is the white fence.

I think that what is looking a little odd with the light around the boat is that there is direct light under the boat and on top of the boat but shaded in between. Maybe the light should be contiguous. The boat is also not casting a shadow on the right side and the grass to right is shaded where maybe there should be bright light extending from the boat roof.

All in all. very nice work!
Al

[wejustin]

I really like the whole product. I actually like the changes in shade and light on the boat. The shadow work seems unimportant to me. There seems to be some issue just to the left of the house but otherwise the sky is great. Very nice.

[monkeygirl123]

Originally Posted by lemonjenny

Great before & after! The finished product is a little green, but I still really like it!

Thanks! I actually work on a laptop which is currently balanced on the arm of the sofa. Every time I flip my screen up and look at this picture it looks a different colour! Lol.

[monkeygirl123]

Originally Posted by Father Bob

I like this photo and what you've done with it. The tone change really makes a difference.
I might have removed the rest of the bridge. It's a little distracting, as is the white fence.

I think that what is looking a little odd with the light around the boat is that there is direct light under the boat and on top of the boat but shaded in between. Maybe the light should be contiguous. The boat is also not casting a shadow on the right side and the grass to right is shaded where maybe there should be bright light extending from the boat roof.

All in all. very nice work!
Al

I definitely prefer the tone change, too. I agree, now I look at it again, I should have removed the rest of the bridge. I do like the fence, though.

You're definitely right about the light on/around the boat. I think I need to find some tutorials on how to use lighting effects correctly. Having looked at the large version of this, I've also noticed a bright blue splodge to the right of the boat in the water, which looks awful. (A bit of sky I didn't remove.)

Thanks so much for your comment.

[monkeygirl123]

Originally Posted by wejustin

I really like the whole product. I actually like the changes in shade and light on the boat. The shadow work seems unimportant to me. There seems to be some issue just to the left of the house but otherwise the sky is great. Very nice.

I don't mind the shade/light on the boat itself, but I do think I could have tried harder with the shadows around it.

You're right....there's a blue area to the left of the house which isn't good. I may go back and try this again. Thanks for your kind comment