Recently I was sent an image to edit, the image was of Amish people in a horse and carriage going down a road into a sunset.  Because of the sunset, the foreground was very dark, so the trick was to see if I couldn’t lighten up the foreground.

Now, I have to explain, I used Photoshop for this tutorial because a lot of what I did to it, I haven’t been able to work out in GIMP.  This is a more complicated tutorial than what I normally show you, but I think it is good to show you what is possible.

So the image is open up in camera raw.  Even thought the image is a jpeg, it can still be processed in camera raw.

Here you can see that I have made a lot of changes.  One of the main ones, I moved the shadows slider more to the right, this way I could bring out more light from those.  I toned down the highlights and the whites, and did the same to the blacks as I did to the shadows.  Just have to be careful doing this, you don’t want to to go too far.  It still needs to look natural.

Still in camera raw I changed the shape of the image, I wanted to get the carriage more over on the left.  I also used the distort button to get rid of the lens problem.

I also cropped the image.  I know cropping isn’t always ideal, but sometimes you just have to do it.  This image was quite a large file, so it should still be alright.

I made use of the third lines when I was doing this.  The sunset ends on the top third line, and the carriage is on the first third line in.

Here you can see what I was saying.

Once the image is cropped I can work on different sections.  The first thing I wanted to do was to get rid of the refection on the road.  It is too distracting and as we want the carriage to be the main point of focus, the reflection had to go.

First of all I used the content aware tool.  I have circled it in red, then circled the area that I wanted to change.  Press Backspace then enter.  Photoshop then replaces that area with what is around it.

You can see here with this enlarged view, that the reflection is gone, but the area still doesn’t look great.

Next I used the patch tool.  The area I want to change was circled then you click inside the area and move it to another area that you want to replace it with.

I did this several times until I was happy with the area.

There is the road, and I hope you agree with me that it looks much better.

I wanted to see if I could make the carriage a little lighter, so I used the lasso tool to mark an area around the carriage and the ground, I am sure you can see the area I am talking about.  Next I got the feathering out and said 50 pixels.  You need to feather the edges so you don’t get a sharp edge to the area you are making lighter.

Then you click on curves and lighten it slightly, have to be careful doing this, it can start to look weird.  I probably went overboard a little, but it was done for effect for you.

Next, and lastly, I wanted to add some gradient.  You could do a vignette, but I find gradient more subtle and you have more control over it.  I wanted to tone the sky down some, it is very bright, and with the blown out bit where the sun is, there is nothing you can do with that, but putting a gradient tone over the top will take out some of the brightness.  I also did it to the road, you want to do everything you can to bring the focus to the carriage.

The gradient tool is used by clicking outside the image, hold the left mouse button down and then going over into the image and then releasing it where you want it to stop.

So here is the final image.

It is always going to be hard working with an image like this, and sometimes you can’t do anything to them.  This isn’t bad, and I know the woman who I edited it for was quite happy with the end result.

Something I have been considering, mainly through comments and stuff, is offering some online classes, or rather using something like skype on Google+, with Google+ I can give a tutorial and you will be able to see my desktop and what I am doing and ask me questions.  I will be able to demonstrate how I do the work.

Before I organise anything, I need to know first of all if people would be interested.  At first, I will do them for free, the first one or two, as I am sure there will be problems, and things will have to be sorted out.

Once the problems are sorted out I will charge for them, though, depending on how many people want to do them, but at this point I am thinking of charging around $10 per person.    I will also do a couple of different times, since we are all in different parts of the world.  I have a great website that tells me the time everywhere in the world and I will give that link to you as well.

So if you are interested let me, you can either leave a comment here or send me an email leanne@leannecole.com.au

Awards

I have once again been nominated for some awards.

I have received two nominations for the One Lovely Blog Award,

by Relative Perfection

http://relativeimperfection.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/nominated-for-the-one-lovely-blog-award/

and Frozen Moments

http://fotshot.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/one-lovely-blog-award-nomination/

I have also received a nomination for the Very Inspiring Blog Award as well by Patriciaddrury,

http://patriciaddrury.com/2012/11/04/the-very-inspiring-blogger-award/

Thank you very much to the three blogs, it is always lovely receiving nominations and I hope you will all go and check out their blogs.