Drawing Light

[Joe M]

There is a new Training Course at Kelby Training called Drawing Light (http://www.kelbytraining.com/player/index.html#80). It's really informative and can drastically change the way you enhance photographs. Instead of me trying to explain it, I encourage you to go and view the first few videos. (The first 3 in the course are free.)

A couple of hints that will be explained in the course that I found help a lot.

*Use a different layer for every effect.
* Label each layer.
* Lower the opacity of the brush, not the layer. This allows you to change the opacity of different parts of the image without changing the entire image.

This method is very much a personal thing. No two people will do a photo the same way. Here is my first try. Of course I have a long way to go before I master the technique. For example the white area of the roof needs work in the After photo.

Have Fun.

Before with just minor changes in Camera Raw.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1vKytrYtMSjYGveqHDuUb9yUmiIMi0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1vKytrYtMSjYGveqHDuUb9yUmiIMi0)

After Drawing Light Method

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1cf5ALoc9vSMYM8Udj1uQPGqE4S7D0_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1cf5ALoc9vSMYM8Udj1uQPGqE4S7D0)

[christellf]

Joe,
Thanks so much for directing us to this. I love that old house you are working with & looks good with any effect you try with it. Looks interesting & will surely check it out.
Christell

[Joe M]

Thank You Christell.

After I did this photo, which took about 20 minutes. I went back and watched the next 4-5 videos in the training course. In the next few days I'm going to take my time and do this photo over. There are some powerful techniques in this course that will take time to master. Of course the more experienced Photoshop users will master it quicker.

[NMarti]

Joe
I have been looking at those classes and trying to find time to take some. I really like the warm, late afternoon coloring of the after photo, but then I really like that house too. A lot of rustic charm there.

[JulieM]

Joe,

Is that course for CS or PSE? It sounds really interesting...

[Joe M]

Thanks Nancy.

I know it's hard to find time for some of these courses. I basically do whatever I want and there's still not enough time in the day.

Julie you can do just about everything in PSE. The basic method involves creating a new layer, changing the Blend Mode to Multiply, Overlay, Hue, or Saturation. Then painting with black & white, or another bright color. It gets a little more involved than that, but that's the basics of it.

I have tried it with PSE 6 and it works fine.

[JulieM]

Thanks, Joe. Did you sign up for the on-line training or are you just working through the free introductory lessons?

[Joe M]

Julie I signed up for the monthly training. To me it's well worth the money.

For example I wanted to learn how to do Actions. Matt K. has a class on it. Within 30 minutes I was making Actions like a pro. I have an Action now that takes 2 seconds to do a complete LAB BW Conversion. I still may have to tweak it a little but all the hard work is done, in 2 seconds.

[GaryK]

Joe

Nice job.

Where do find all these wonderful old buildings??:)

[Joe M]

Thanks Gary.

In the area I live, Eastern North Carolina, there are thousands of old farm buildings/houses. For hundreds of years this area was primarily geared toward agriculture, mostly tobacco. But the small farms are dying out. I read the other day that the County next to mine is losing 30 acres of farm land a day to developers.

I thought it would be nice to document these old buildings by taking pictures before they are all gone.