By the sea

[Cheryl Slechta]

I'll start the week off with an impression of a starfish taken at Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine, FL. I used Topaz Adjust Simplify Photo Pop to boost the colors in the little shells, then Sunshine filter in Nik Color then slight High pass sharpening to add a little more texture
(thanks to Julie Kenward - I used a tutorial she posted on ETL).

Thanks for looking. C&C welcome.:)

[Andrew McLachlan]

Cheryl, I like how you were able to all those little bits of broken shells come to life by making the colors pop the way they did. Nice job with this one!

[denise ippolito]

Cheryl, I 'd love it if you could provide us with the link:) I love this one. The soft pale colors appeal to me and the impression of the starfish is a great idea. I wish the drop on the right edge were completely included. Your signature is fantastic!

[Cheryl Slechta]

Denise, I'll find Julie's tutorial - I think I know approximately where it is and will post it. :)

[Cheryl Slechta]

Cheryl, I 'd love it if you could provide us with the link:) I love this one. The soft pale colors appeal to me and the impression of the starfish is a great idea. I wish the drop on the right edge were completely included. Your signature is fantastic!


Denise, her tutorial on high pass was in a string of comments but I've copied it:


Okay, high pass filter is great for adding sharpening or texture right in areas that are a bit more diffused than what we would like. In this image I duplicated the BG layer first (but if you have multiple layers then you would combine the layers with Ctrl + Alt + E). Then go to filters/Other/High Pass. Your top layer will go to a funky gray color. What you're looking for is a slight white edge to appear around the parts you want to crisp up. For this image, I used 5.5 as the setting. In some images you'll only use 1-2 and in some you'll use 15! Once you see the beginnings of the white areas around the gray image then you go over to the layer palette and change the blend mode to either Overlay or Soft Light. I almost always prefer Soft light as it's not quite as harsh. Now you can either bring the opacity down a bit (I went to 96%) and you can also add a layer mask and paint out some of the "brittleness" in areas where you don't really need the extra sharpness (like the head and beak, legs, etc.) This is a quickie version of what I did...you might take more time and play around with it more and see if you like what it does to your image:

High pass filter is a great sharpening tool to have in your arsenal. Play around with it and try it out on different things like feathers, fur, tree bark, etc.

[denise ippolito]

Cheryl, I think many will like to see this. Thanks for taking the time to cut and paste it.:)

[Kerry Perkins]

Cheryl, this is very nice. I like the wet sand color and I can easily imagine myself holding the sea star. Very nice moment in time captured!

I have added a link to this post in the OOTB Workflow sticky. Thanks for sharing it! I will, of course, thank Jules. :cool:

[Indranil Sircar]

Very nice, Cheryl. Love the high-pass effect. Just like Andrew noted the broken shells are very nice makes this a standout composition. TFS.

[Julie Kenward]

I'm glad you all like the high pass filter info - I would have posted it sooner but assumed everyone was using it! Some photographers I know use only HPF sharpening as they find it less "intense" overall but I mostly like it for bringing out texture and defining edges.

[Bob Miller]

Cheryl....Thanks for finding the high pass tutorial notes. I was using it but mostly guessing the radius....Thanks again!