[DJ1234]

Hey Everybody,

It's me again.

Here's the first shot.




Here's post-photoshop. As best I can remember I selected all the metal and deselected the shadows and the bright image in the center (which took hours to do), then I went to Image>adjustments>variations. Another pop-up window shows up, and I chose the saturation button and then chose the picture that says less. It still looked flat, so I adjusted the brightness and it seemed to give it more depth. I also used the rubber stamp tool to remove a weed growing through the branches and an area that I didn't notice wasn't selected.

photo #2



What do you think? Give it to me straight.

D.J.

[matthew]

Hi DJ;

I like the look you've created here. Do you work with layers and masks in Photoshop?

[DJ1234]

I'm still pretty new to photoshop. I know enough to know what you're referring to with layers and masks, but don't know much else about them. For this project I didn't use any layers or masks, though maybe I should have. Can you tell me more about them or direct me to somewhere I can read about them?

D.J.

[NT73]

Whooo. You don't know what you are missing. Instead of variations ...look for 'Levels' or 'Curves'
Can't give you PS tutorials as I am not on my own PC.
But for the time being, google or Altavista 'Free Photoshop tutorials' and see what comes along.

[DJ1234]

Thanks NT73! Will do.

[NT73]

http://www.biorust.com/index.php?page=tutorial
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html
http://www.arraich.com/elements/psE_intro.htm
http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut026.htm
Try these for starters, and don't just look at one page. find the home page and look around. There are a heck of a lot of offering there.
I have them saved in my favourites, thats why I could not remember yesterday.

[ADK_Jim]

Layers and masks is definitely the better way to go for this effect. Clone out the weed then add a Channels adjustment layer. Check mark the "monochrome" box and play with the individual channels to get the B&W rendition you want. Finally paint back in the color part with black on the layer mask. A lot less time than all the selection stuff and if you make a small error painting the color back in with the mask, just switch the brush color to white and paint it back to B&W.Working on the mask at 100% image size or greater makes it easier to be precise.

A very nice photo and I like what you did but you worked much harder than you needed to.