Gothic Church

[dnl_estrella]

I went to San Francisco and took a myriad of pictures and among them was this one. Nothing special about this picture, really. Just one of those shots that makes you feel like a full on tourist. Where this get's interesting though, is the other day, I was looking through dps forums here, and I found one that dealt with retouching pictures that were otherwise goners.



So the first thing I did was outline the church and select is as a layer, and set it aside for later use. Afterwards, I used a gradient filter on the original image , so as to set a darker, more serious mood. Once I did that, I used an option on my pp software that sets clouds. I made it so the clouds were dense, grey, and dispersed throughout the whole image, so the sky wouldn't look like a block of color. I then used another option which sets particles of your choice, and I chose rain. I didnt put rain on the image for any reason other than to soften the color of the sky, and again, not make it look like one huge block of blue/black. Once I had my background all done, I blurred it all just to soften it further.

After this, I went to the cutout layer of just the church. I then used a clone tool to pan over the children crossing sign, as well as the street sign. I then changed the hue of the church to give it a sort of underlit tone. Once that was finished, I used a spotlight effect to change the lighting on the church. I figured since the sky was supposed to be darkened, most light wouldn't exactly be coming from up top, but reflecting off the cars and the sidewalk. Due to that, I tried to light the church with a very soft light (because its light that's reflecting) originating at the bottom of the church and dying out as it pans higher. After many tedious tries, I finally settled on the effect that I think suited it best.

Once all THIS was done, I copied the finished layer of the church and pasted it over the background. Once everything was well aligned, I merged both layers. Just to give the church a feel that it WAS within the occurring background, I splashed it with a bit of particle layering of rain. And finally, I blurred the whole image a tad so as to reduce contrast in the edges of anything that might stand out.

Now, it's no killer image, nor is it fantastic or splendid :P, BUT, for my first try at saving an otherwise relatively uninteresting shot, I think it's not half bad.



Any suggestions, questions, and comments are more than welcome.
Hope my post is of help to anyone looking to do this.

- ok to re edit and post in dps.

[shiraq]

I think you make a good job with this. try some more contrasting tone to give a strong sensation of cold and rainy weather.