Theme: Snowy flurry

Thought I would try out the snow tutorial (at least the falling snow type) so I gave it a try. I doubt that it snows much at the Salton Sea, being that it's 227 feet below sea level, but who knows? As some of you know by now, I love to play with words and to juxtapose concepts, like an egret in the snow... ;)

I started in LR2 by saving two different versions of the base image. It turns out that you can make a pretty nice soft image filter look just by taking the "clarity" slider all the way to the left. I did that and saved that image. I went back and took the clarity slider all the way to the right and saved that one also. I then opened both images in PS CS4 and copied one on top of the other. Now I had a very soft and a very sharp image to blend into the kind of look I wanted - soft but with some detail.

Added a couple of snow layers with noise, blur, and layer modes (screen) to make the flurry. Figured out way too late that I had made my flakes too small. Oh, the humanity! So, I went back to the snow layers and used "transform" to make them bigger, which made the flakes bigger. Biggest challenge was getting snow on the bill and legs, since these features are black and drop out with a screen mode layer applied above them.

Thanks for your comments!

Kerry, This does have a nice soft quality to it-yet it has good detail. I might take the color cast off the bird,but it does add to the feel of cold so maybe just reduce it a bit? You certainly are becoming quite the photoshop wiz! Great job Kerry and thankyou much for the detailed workflow. I love the BG colors and your snow is well done.

Thanks Denise. I pondered over the color cast and thought it was cool (:)) but I think it does look better without it!

Kerry - great snow! I like the repost a little better but both are nice. The workflow is much appreciated - I
haven't had much time to explore LR2 but this will get me started:)

Kerry, They are both nice but I do like the repost better.

Very nice, Kerry. That egret looks cold! :D The predominant blue color adds a lot to the chilly feel. Both the original and repost are good, though it looks to me like you lost some of the detail in the egret's body in the repost.

Kerry, I agree that that the details seem to be missing.

Maybe this is better? Added a vignette effect and used a different method of removing the color cast.

Thanks!

LOLOL..I must be blind..but its probably my crappy monitor..I see no colorcast...just a very nice image...with snow added

My first thought was exactly what Christopher said - that little guy really looks cold! Color cast doesn't bother me, but repost is good too.

Love the punny stuff - :D

Kerry, Excellent re repost!!!!

Nice job on the repost, Kerry.

Beautiful composition, Kerry. I really like the mood here with the repost. Excellent colors and effect.