Old-Time Gulls

[risingqef]

Before:



After:





A pair of seagulls on the banks of the Maumee River. The city in the background is Toledo, OH. The ship to the right is the floating museum.

Steps:
I completed these steps in PH7

Copied background and cleaned up the digital defects (using Patch tool)

Copied defects layer, Gaussian blur, 4.0; added black mask. used rec marquee to draw box around the perimeter; Select-->Inverse; Select-->Modify-->Smooth-->100; Select-->Modify-->Feather-->50; saved as path; Delete.

Created new layer; cleaned up the gull mess (on the near pole) using the clone stamp tool.

Created curves layer, punched up the highlights and shadows (rbg curve only).

Created new layer; created selection of saved path, filled with black; copied layer, Gaussian blur, 4.0

Created new hue/saturation layer, colorize, hue 34

Created new layer and merged everything;

Duplicated merged layer; sharpened 160/1.0/4; added black layer mask, used radial gradient on mask to just sharpen the foreground gull...

If I had a newer version of Photoshop, it might have been easier. However, doing it the hard way is interesting, sometimes...

I appreciate all comments and suggestions.

[Jae]

Very nice adjustments. I like how the sepia tone brings out the subjects (the birds & Boat) and hides away the background.

[dlaf]

I have to agree with Jae. It was a very nice improvement! Thank you for including your steps, and welcome to DPS!

[risingqef]

I appreciate your comments.