One Photo Focus – nancy merrill photography

One Photo Focus: March 2016

I was asked by Stacy Fischer at Visual Venturing to provide an image for the March 2016 One Photo Focus challenge. The image I picked is this one of the north stairs of the Adams Memorial Theatre at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

The theatre sits on the Southern Utah University campus in Cedar City, Utah, and opened in 1977. It is one of the most accurate replicas of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the world (at least the back and main stage areas). This last summer (2015) was the last year that plays will be staged at this theatre. The festival is building a new theater to replace this one, so this last summer was a bit nostalgic for festival goers.

For my edit, I first opened the RAW image in Photoshop’s RAW converter and used the following settings:

With these settings, I got this image:

Next, I added the following two duplicate background layers, each with a layer mask:

Soft Light blending mode
Multiply blending mode

On the Multiply layer, I added a Gaussian Blur at 15.0%. All of this created this image:

Next, I used a soft brush set at 100% opacity and in the layer mask of the Multiply layer mask, erased the theatre sign. I then set the Opacity of the SoftLight layer to 55%.

Here is what I had so far:

A quick crop to tighten up the image gave me my final image:

For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: March.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

One Photo Focus: February

Last month, I found a great method for adding deeper colors to my photos, and I was really excited to try it out on this month’s One Photo Focus.

Here is the original photo, by Stacey at lens addiction:

When I opened the RAW file in Photoshop, I used the following settings in the RAW converter:

These settings got me to here:

For the final touches, I used an action that I created that I call Adding Deeper Color II. It includes adding two duplicate layers of the background, one with a setting of SoftLight and the other Multiply, with the Multiply layer on top of the SoftLight layer. For both layers, I added mask layers. I also added a Gaussian Blur at 15.0% to the Multiply layer. Then I used a soft brush set to Opacity 100% and black (to remove) and brushed over the boat and buildings on the Multiply layer. This is what I got:

Thanks to Stacy for hosting this fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: February.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

One Photo Focus January 2016

Laura Macky Photography has provided a lovely image for us to play with this month. Here’s her original:

After playing around with the contrast and brightness and enjoying a bit of cropping, I decided to use one of the black & white presets I purchased from Little Lusker. The final one I settled on is Film. Here is the end result:

Stacy, thanks, as always, for a fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: January.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

One Photo Focus October

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve had the chance to participate in one of Stacy Fischer’s One Photo Focus challenges. It feels good to be back.

This month, we received a photo from Michelle Lunato, a wonderful photographer, who provided this beautiful image for us to play with.

When I opened the RAW image, I made these adjustments first:

These settings gave me this image:

I loved the sun flare, but wanted to add a little lens flare to compliment it. I used these settings in the lens flare filter:

For instructions on using the lens flare filter on an “empty” layer, see this YouTube video.

So adding the flare created a nice, light effect:

I’ve been playing around with posterizing images lately, and thought this image lent itself nicely to some posterizing. I used these settings in the Photoshop Fine Art Gallery filter:

I really like how the filter gives the image a more defined look:

Finally, I wanted to give it more of a painting feeling, so I added a blank layer filled with white and then used a fun eraser brush to “reveal” the image under the white layer:

I hope you enjoy my experiments. I sure did.

Stacy, thanks, as always, for a fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: October.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

After Before Friday July One Photo Focus

For this month’s One Photo Focus, Robin Kent supplied us with this beautiful shot.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time to work on this, but I thought it would be fun to try out some of the tools that come packaged with Photoshop.

First, I tweaked some of the color levels, contrast, and saturation to intensify the image. Next, from Filter > Filter Gallery, I selected Poster Edges from the Artistic collection. Then I used The Hue/Saturation sepia setting and toned down the saturation.

Next, I created a solid color (white) layer and set it’s opacity to 35%. For the next step, it took me about twenty minutes to find an eraser brush tip I liked to “erase” parts of the solid layer to reveal more of the image below. I finally settled on the Round Fan Stiff Thin Bristles brush tip and played around until I liked the effect.

Hope you like the final product!

Stacy, thanks, as always, for a fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: July.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

One Photo Focus: June

For this week’s challenge, Stacy gave us one of hers. It’s a lovely image that, for me, is a little over-exposed. Seemed like a great challenge!

Before

When I opened the image in Photoshop, I used these settings on the RAW converter:

Which resulted in this image:

Finally, it seemed like a gentle sepia wash would give the image a lovely nostalgic feeling:

Stacy, thanks, as always, for a fun challenge. For more from this challenge, visit One Photo Focus: June.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!

After Before Friday One Photo Focus Week 35

This is my second time participating in Stacy Fisher’s After Before Friday challenge. This week, we were all given the same photo to process. Here’s the original: