articles/Boudoir/innocenceturned-page4

Innocence Turned - A Journey - part 4 of 1 2 3 4

by Tom Lee Published 06/06/2012

The following sequence is the process of post production for the image Washing the Sins Away. During a trip to Ireland in May 2011, I was scouting for a tranquil location that had a touch of serenity with a lake or stream that our heroine could realistically bathe in and remove the rigours of battle. This shot was the inspiration for the resulting image. (1)

Knowing the background for the finished image suggested various poses for our model to adopt in the studio session. These images show the original chromakey image and the resulting png keyed-image ready for compositing to the background. (2a,2b)

With the two images combined, each layer was adjusted for colour, contrast and tone to get as even a match as possible. The background layer is then copied and defocused using a lens blur technique from the filters menu. A gradient mask is applied to the blurred layer to give the effect of depth of field in the scene.(3)

The layer with the model was then copied and flipped vertically to create the reflection. The reflection was then softened using a 'Hard Light' layer blend mode to pick up the movement in the water, then selectively reduced in opacity to achieve a realistic look.(4)

The active layers are then flattened into a single composite layer whilst retaining all the separate layers below. (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E). This combined layer is then increased in saturation and contrast to a pleasing amount using my own glow technique in order to retain detail in both shadows and highlights.(5)

The next stage is to tone the image in Silver Efex Pro 2 by Nik filters followed by Color Efex Pro 4 Darken to Lighten Centre. This concentrates the viewer's eye to our heroin.(6)

An added touch is the creation of several 'ripples' in the water. These were created by making another flattened composite layer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E). The elliptical lasso tool was used to describe an ellipse with the right perspective on this layer and use the modify command to add a border several pixels wide. The selection was then inverted and deleted, leaving only the ripple remaining. An embossing effect was then applied to add depth and shape. The bits not required were then erased.(7a, 7b)

Finally the Color Efex Pro 4 Detail Extractor filter brings out the fine detail in some elements that are lost during applications of previous filter layers.(8)

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• Innocence Turned - A Journey page 4
  

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