Mission Courtyard

[kimbakaye]

I am trying to improve my photography and post processing skills. I was attempting to teach myself how to get the "orton effect" in some of my pictures. I would appreciate feedback on if I overdid the effect for this picture and also any thoughts on the compostion of the picture itself. Is it boring? Would a different crop work better? any thoughts would be appreciated

[windrider86]

With just a slight move of the camera or a crop this has a ton of potential.
Looking at this, there is so much going on that one doesnt know what to look at. Keep it simple.
If it were me, I would crop down the top part, leaving if at all, only a hint of the roof. I use my hands as a fake frame a lot to try an envision what an image would look like if this area or that area were removed.

As far as the Orton effect. Thats all a matter of taste. Generally an Orton image has a glow to it and is real soft. To be honest, I'm not seeing that in this one. What were the steps you took to get that look?

[kimbakaye]

Thanks for the reply. I will try to crop down the roof line a bit and see if it helps. The effect was done by making layers and keeping one very sharp and blurring the other with the Gausian (sp?) blur. Then I merged them and changed the opacity of the sharp layer to show through some of the blur. Maybe I didn't show enough of the blur to give it any effect.

[windrider86]

Try doing this. You'll have 3 layers. The bottom layer is the orginal. the middle layer should have the blend mode set to screen. The top layer you'll apply the Gaussian blur to it and then set your blend mode to multiply. Then adjust the opacity to taste

[kimbakaye]

Thanks! I will try that.