In 2020, amid a pandemic, I intended to get good at Photoshop.
Because I was not travelling to any destinations that I love photographing, learning Photoshop seemed like a good way to wile away the weeks that turned into months, hoping to greatly improve some of my old photographs.
So, we’re here now, still not travelling for over a year, and this is my first “Photoshopped” project for a landscape image.
Browsing through my inventory, I found this image I captured of Wind Point Lighthouse in August 2019, on a trip through Racine, Wisconsin with my Grand Nephew Gavin. The day was cloudy white, I almost couldn’t tell the difference between the white lighthouse and the white sky, but I took the image anyway, and now on my monitor it spoke to me saying “Help Me!”
To the rescue — Photoshop’s new Sky Replacement tool! It made it much easier for me to put in a colorful sunset. Other basic operations with brushes and masks and color overlays helped me to:
- add a shadow to make the lighthouse cylindrical shape appear
- put a red light in the tower
- add a pinkish glow to the foreground.
It was still slow going for me. I knew what look I was trying to get, but I was pretty wobbly in knowing which tools to use and how to use them. Photoshop enables one to do a lot with certain key combinations for actions that aren’t in the menus. I try to keep a good set of notes about these, but because of my infrequent use in the past, I struggled to find the right set of keys to do what I wanted.
Practice, Harry. Practice!
Do you have any “pandemic” projects you’ve been working on? Let me know in the comments below.
Your combining of subject matter and editing has created a beautiful piece of art Harry! Thank you for sharing this image!!!
Thank you, Stef. Getting back to making creations feels good!
it’s gorgeous, of course… but now can I trust my eyes? I will email you a not shopped sunset from our yard. What I’ve been doing in pandemic isolation is dog training, new corgi pup now a year old, and writing the second/third draft of my novel. Maybe I’ll send you a photo that needs shopping for the book cover! Blessings to you both.
Thank you Christina,
I am happy that you have two creative streams going — one physical with immediate feedback (corgi training) and one mental/intellectual (your book-writing project) with feedback in the future coming from your readers.
As far as trusting your eyes, sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. Your brain tries to explain what is in front of your eyes. This lighthouse has seen many hundreds of thousands of clouds and sunsets, so does it really matter which one is there now, or from where? But if there were a mountain in the background, then are we still in Wisconsin? Nah!
I’d be honored to work with you on an image for your book cover! Thanks for thinking of me.
Blessings to you and Ann.
Great work Harry, Wow what a transformation. Love your site, thanks for sharing.
Bill
Thank you Bill. Hope you’re feeling better. Love seeing your art on Flickr too!
I enjoy looking at your art. Very impressive. Great work. I like the slider showing before and after. I still get my creative energy out doing database programming.
Thanks, Jay. I too am still into some coding — website design, construction, and maintenance on the WordPress platform. Let’s grab a lunch sometime and catch up!
Beautiful change to the photo, Unc! Would not be able to tell any photoshopping had been done. You seem to have developed that skill rather quickly. Creative genius!
Thank you, Mike!