El Vaquero

[FormElement]

Thought I would post a decent salvage of an admittedly weak capture. The light was just very "blah" but I wanted to see if I could get anything out of this one.

Basic process.

1) Duplicate original
2) do a high pass filter sharpen (8 px @ full res to get some usable contrast)
3) Run a curves layer with a luminosity mask, pull the middle as high as it will go without clipping. This brings the highlights up only without blowing them.
4) Add a vignette (soft mask an exposure adjustment layer)
5) Add a B&W adjustment layer, started at max black and then pulled up the reds a bit.
6) Add a sepia filter adjustment layer. fiddle with it till it looks a little ominous.

That's how I got it done this time. I could probably dump a couple steps and get a similar result if I wanted to do it again.

P.S. - After reduction, I noticed there is an important point. At full resolution you can see how soft the original image is. At web size, it looks substantially sharper. That's just a benefit/pitfall of web compression on high res originals.

[windrider86]

I like the effect you gave this.