A simple polarizing effect

Just occasionally you may get a photo that looks very "washed out" the main part of the picture may look reasonable but the sky is lighter than you think it should be. This very simple fix may be your answer!

 Here I have a rather wishy washy photograph that will benefit from the technique I am about to show you.
First of all, open the picture in Photoshop Elements (this technique will work in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) and use "Full Edit" from the selection on the right - not Quick Edit or Guided Edit. We will be working with LAYERS and this is not possible in Quick or Guided edit modes.
In the Layers palette on the right hand side, click on the "Create new layer" button.

Can you see the word "Normal" written in a box above the layers?
Click on this box and it will drop down giving a long list of words.
Click on "Soft Light"

The word "Normal" should now be replaced with the words "Soft Light".
You will see no changes to the picture yet but the "Soft light" blending mode will make a big difference to what we do next.
Now change the foreground colour to black (pressing the letter "D" on your keyboard will change the foreground and background colours to black and white)

Click on the brush tool and make it large enough to paint the sky - and make sure that you have a soft brush.

Now paint over your sky - I have deliberately painted over the little stone church so you can see more clearly what I have done.

Use the eraser to remove the darkness that is created, from the areas where it is not wanted. I do not want it over the church so after erasing my painted layer looks like this.

I did change my eraser to a hard edged brush so that it made a neater job of cleaning the sharp edges of the roof.
Once you are satisfied with the job you have done. go to Layers (on the menu bar) and click on "Flatten image" now the picture can be saved. Always save your altered photos with a new name, so always click on "Save As" not "Save".
I have put both pictures together so that you can see the effect of the painting with black and using Soft Light blending mode.

The foreground also looks a lot brighter - but I must admit that I also went to Enhance>Auto smart fix (from the menu) and that clever little tweak balanced the light and shade.

The effect I have just described to you give a similar effect to putting a circular polarizer on your camera to deepen the blue of the sky and define the clouds.
I hope you give it a try.
AJ

Photo layering

I have been playing yet again! I was busy recording tutorials for a workshop to be held on Wednesday when I managed to get distracted! Every day I enjoy reading the posts from DPS and sometimes becoming "inspired" to try one of the suggestions. The simple tutorials I had been recording led me from one topic to another and thanks to that Photography site, I started to think of textures and layering.
I am not sure if my "pupils" would appreciate this sort of manipulation so I am sharing it with anyone who visits my blog instead!
I started out with a blank canvas and using one of the bog-standard weird Photoshop brushes that I had never used before - it looks a bit like a dirty smudge - I made the brush huge and with two dabs created an interesting "background". Then I "colorised" it in Hue and Saturation and then textured it with a very large and deep canvas texture from filters. I created a soft vignette using the Lens Correction filter and came up with this.

Having a texture meant I needed a photo! I dug one out of my collection, it was a rather pleasant, quiet photo of an Australian pelican on the edge of the water. The texture was overlayed and all sorts of blending modes and opacities were tried. When I settled on one combination I liked I then used a mask to clean the texture from the bird.
So far so good - but not really as inspiring as I thought it could have been. What about some text?
Googled "Australian Pelican" and on a scrap of paper wrote down what was written on the site I opened.

I played around with the colour of the text and placed it over the image making it cover the entire picture. This time I used the Multiply opacity.
 Once again I erased the layer from the bird and this is what I ended up with.

I quite enjoyed experimenting but I am not sure if this example is dramatic enough. I shall have another go with a different texture and photo and see what I can come up with!
AJ