I was driving home from town up from the valley on a back gravel road.
The colors of the trees were gorgeous.
Yet somehow I knew that what I saw and what I shot with the camera would not be the same.
Here is the original:
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I began with a single exposure and just for kicks dropped it into Photomatix Light to see what I could do with it.
PL helped a bit, but the sky wasn't working for me and the photo looked a bit off but I did love the colors in it.
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I deleted it and went back to Topaz Adjust, just for a few minor tweaks.
Normally at this point I just hit the 'delete' button and decide to hunt for a better photograph.
This time I decided to see what I could do with what I had taken.
How far could I go to making this believable?
Copy the backround layer.
Copy some sky from another photo and put it on its own layer.
I used the sky and changed the layer blending mode to linear burn...
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so... I decreased the opacity to 87% and
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Much nicer.
At least the sky now had some hint of color and clouds and it looked fairly natural.
The gravel road itself, I felt could use a touch more detail.
I copied this layer and used Topaz ReMask to 'cut' out the road and isolate it.
Then I used Topaz Detail to bring out the 'gravel' texture and accent the tracks.
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A bit of editing really helped this little back road shot come a long way. :)
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