Seasonal Transformation

[Adhika Lie]

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This weekend marks the beginning of Spring here in the Northern hemisphere. I was bored last night and I played a bit with photoshop and "stitched" these two old photos together. Individually, they are: Spring (http://adhika.photoshelter.com/image/I0000L7O4e6uQSOk) and Fall (http://adhika.photoshelter.com/image/I0000j_sccXtvKXs). I thought it's kinda neat how the mountains and the trees kinda merge together. :) Happy Easter to one and all and have a wonderful Spring (or Fall to the folks down under)!

[David Cowling]

A great idea. You almost had me fooled there until I got to the bottom of the image and saw the join. I don't know how to begin to do this but I expect there will be some way of making the join look almost seamless. Two very nice images in their own right.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Adhika, welcome to OOTB! I've been away traveling so if this isn't your first post here it is for me so I welcome you:S3: Wonderful OOTB thinking. David has a good point about the transition - if you have two layers you should be able to brush the seams and fix it fairly easily. You would only need to work on the lower portion where that spit juts into the water and the water to the left of the rock to make it look perfect. I hope we see more of your images and creative thinking here.

[Diane Miller]

Clever idea well done! I like the transition idea. I think you have some leeway to play a little more with the opacity in the overlap near the bottom, but maybe you tried it already and would up here.

An idea worth remembering! Jerry Uelsmann took this sort of thing into the stratosphere.

[Dennis Bishop]

Your idea has a lot of appeal, and the water separating Spring and Fall is very effective. Besides what's already been mentioned, I think it would help to alter the coloration of one or both mountains (lower the saturation of the one on the right?) and have the scale of the trees on both sides be the same. It could be a challenge finding two images of the same scale, but there's another way to do it. Select the left or right half of the image at about mid-width (I'd go for the right half), and delete it. Then duplicate the layer with just the left half and flip it horizontally and move it to the right. some of the greens are quite green; the others are on the yellow side. If you clip a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the layer with the right side of the image and successively choose yellow or green, you can change the Hue of each to a different Fall color and adjust the saturation to suit. (The same thing could be done in the Camera Raw filter if you're using Photoshop CC.) Some blending would be needed, but you'd have the same colors in the mountains, and the trees would be the same scale.

Just a thought. I hope you continue to share your creativity with us.

[Adhika Lie]

Wow, thank you every one for these responses. This was more like 15 minutes work last night before I decided to watch Netflix for the rest of the night. Now, I can see some potentials :D

David, Cheryl, and Diane, thanks for the input about bottom transition. I made some quick modification to the brushing and applied some healing brush actions.

Dennis, thanks for pointing out about the mountain coloration. I try to fix that here. I think I might have to work on the tonality a little bit. I have to rush to my Friday night events in a few moments, but here is another 15 minutes work on that based on the input.

I still have to process your pointers about the tree scales. The comment makes a lot of sense. I am trying to wrap my mind around the methods of doing that. I think it's more because of my lack of experience with photoshop.

Keep the comments coming, friends. I really appreciate it! Thank you so much!

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[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Adhika, you're on the right track - just some healing and tonality changes on the areas you're working on and I think you've got it.

Diane - Jerry Uelsmann lives near me and is still active in the art community. He has works exhibited at the Harn Museum of Art and attends the Gallery Talks there periodically. He gave a gallery talk last year - he's still vibrant and very funny.:S3:

[Adhika Lie]

It feels like the bottom transition is smoother without the small island...

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[Dennis Bishop]

You've made some nice improvements. I decided to play around a bit with the flip idea I'd mentioned. As things turned out, it wasn't as easy as I'd anticipated. Here's what happened along with some explanation of the steps I took to do it.

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(An image of the layer palette is below.) Because I didn't want everything to be symmetrical, I first used the Quick Selection tool to select only the trees on the Spring side of the river. A Copy and Paste put that selection on a transparent layer. I flipped that layer horizontally, moved it just a bit and, with an Edit>Transform, extended the left side slightly and the bottom a greater amount (because it reduced symmetry some but mostly it made the right side follow the bend of the river). The masking was done to reveal the part of the river that was covered in the center and remove a part of the mountain I'd inadvertently selected.

Then, I clipped a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the second layer. It was used to alter the colors of the greens and the yellow-greens, and both their saturation and lightness a little. That put some Fall color into the right side but not much color variation, so I made a copy of the second layer (without the clipped adjustment layer) and played with the greens and yellow-greens in the HSL / Grayscale tab in the Camera Raw filter using Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. This introduced some additional variation which was enhanced with the Hard Light blend mode. There were still no yellow leaves, however, so I copied those from the first layer using Select>Color Range and transformed them mostly by squishing the height to make the yellow trees somewhat shorter but mostly to push them down to where the other trees were larger.

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[Nancy Bell]

I'm late to the party, as they say! Adhika, welcome to OOTB and this image is a great way to start. Very creative thinking and everyone has really given this some thought and suggestions. Dennis, this is great that you attached your workflow. Much appreciated. My thought would be to move the mountains on the right up so they are higher and look more in proportion to those on the left. That would make the hills on each side meet more seamlessly. The foreground could dissolve into the lake and the yellows made more blue to match the river. Lots of play with in this combined image!

[Cheryl Slechta]

Adhika, I liked your idea of removing the island - I had thought of it on your original post, considered it part of the scene and decided not to mention. Then I saw your repost with it removed and liked it. But, with Dennis' repost I will change my mind (again) and think that I like it better if you don't remove it. I like Dennis' rendition but I prefer having more of the yellows from your OP.:S3:

[Anita Bower]

What a wonderfully creative, out of the box image!

[Adhika Lie]

Dennis, thanks so much for that helpful screenshot. After being pointed out by everyone else, I think I am now bothered by the scale. I have to think about this a little bit more. I think the small mountain on the right makes it really out of proportion to the one on the left like Nancy said. But again, these pictures individually were really not created to be fused to begin with. I intended to make them part of a series that speak about " changes" so to speak and as I looked over the album I wanted to give it a twist by merging these two. Now I see the potentials for this, I really have to think about all these good points before I shoot.

Thanks so much, everyone!