Haddon Hall

Here's a dramatic look at Haddon Hall:

Just as it came out of the camera - I guess

The image has actually had very little done to it in the way of manipulation, less than a couple of minutes work in Photoshop 7. But it has been manipulated, that's for sure...

But with your skills John, you could turn base metal into gold in a few minutes.

On a more serious note, is the lighting courtesy of Haddon Hall :

Looks like the sky's been removed John
There's a lorra lorra halos round them thar chimenies
Matt

The sky was fairly bland and the lighting was normal overcast daylight.

I selected the sky with the Magic Wand, expanding the selection slightly so that there was no boundary line. The sky was then deleted.

A second layer was created and placed underneath. This layer was filled with black.

A third layer was placed under the other two and filled with white.

I used a small brush size and the eraser tool to selectively put holes in the black layer. On a large version of the image this simulates star patterns, but they are too small to show here.

Finally, excessive use of levels created the artificial colour of the building. The image is then flattened, sharpened and saved as an A3 TIFF ready for print. A smaller 1000 pixel JPEG is made if I want it for EPZ and this version is uploaded to Photobucket if I want to post it here. Resizing to 800 pixels can be done in Photobucket.

EDIT: The haloes round the chimneys don't show on the full size version, so that might be a result of the resizing.

To be honest?? The pavement is wonderful. very nice pastels in there.
The bushes against the building are a bit to saturated for my taste and out of balance with the pavement. The sky......? I would have gone for a very dark blue. With just a hint of color. Just IMHO, obviously
Martin.

Good heavens, less than two minutes???

He's the fastest paint in the West, no doubt there.

This is good John.

Nice style of PP. I like it. Almost done like a tonmapped image. You seem to have some great PS skills for sure.

I like the saturated colours you have made it works with the colour of the castle.

Angle of view makes it interesting.

It's not just the halos, John
It's the lighting... I would've added the following step:
* Add a new layer
* Change blend mode to Multiply
* Pick a small, soft black brush on 10% opacity
* Carefully paint near the edges to effectively change the lighting source.
(Or you could use Overlay blend mode and paint black/white to do both darken & brighten).

Just a thought
Matt

Matt,

When are you going to start up your Photoshop courses :

Hi Hyram,
Just need to find: (a) a place to host it that's large enough, (b) some time, (c) enough people to fund such an event.
I'm mulling things over and trying to come up with a plan

If anyone's interested, please PM me with a list of topics you'd like covered
I'll see what I can do!
Matt

John

Great image, as many of yours are.

Reminds me of my time at Hogwarts !