From Grunge to Orton

I'm slowly working my way through my images from my last trip to Italy. This is the Abbey of Sant'Antimo, a former Benedictine monastery near Montalcino in Tuscany. I had been showing a friend how to do the Orton effect and it inspired me to apply it to some of my Italian images. I didn't use as much Gaussian blur as I usually do on the three I'll be posting in the next several days and on this one I copied the 2 largest cypress trees in the original TIFF and layered them on top at a reduced opacity to bring back some of the detail that was lost. Because the sky was flat and featureless I added a texture from Shadowhouse and used Multiply blend mode at 50%.
Thanks for looking:S3:

Really like the comp and the Orton Cheryl. Love the cypress trees too. I wonder about blurring the texture in the sky a wee bit, as I find it vying for my attention. The monastery is beautiful and looks old.

Oh, this looks so perfectly Tuscany! This is a beautiful angle to capture that lovely old stone monastery with the surrounding olive(?) trees. I agree with Jackie that the texture in the sky is a bit overpowering. I'm enjoying your trip vicariously :S3:!

Thanks, Jackie for the sky suggestion. I reworked it by adding a surface blur to the sky - I like it better:S3:

I do too Cheryl, it is resembling some of the texture in the masonry.