The Lone Cavalryman

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11-01-2010, 11:30 AM
Christopher Miller

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The Lone Cavalryman

Another Civil War photo, a battle picture for a change. My favorite part of this battle was the cavalry action. Here, I managed to capture one of the Union cavalrymen as he charged the Confederate cavalry.

I cloned out a tent that merged with the soldier and a few other small stuff; converted the image to B&W; applied "Layer Mask 2" from Shadowhouse Creations; and then applied three of my own textures.
11-01-2010, 04:42 PM
Andrew McLachlan

Christopher, this is another fine "old" photo you have created. Thanks for posting the tutorial on this technique the other day. Well done!
11-01-2010, 07:30 PM
denise ippolito

I can almost here the bugles. I might tone down the area near the tents. This really does look like an old photo and I think the subject and placement in the frame is very nice. I love the edges. Nice work.
11-01-2010, 07:51 PM
Judy Howle

It really does look old! I like the edge texture and all of them really work well. Nice job!
11-02-2010, 01:22 AM
Indranil Sircar

Sure looks like an old photograph! The textures are awesome. Very nicely done.
11-02-2010, 01:47 PM
Christopher Miller

Thanks very much commenting, Andrew, Denise, Judy, and Indranil. Much appreciated!
Denise, I'll see about toning down that area a bit.
11-02-2010, 08:15 PM
Paul Lagasi

This is really nice piece of work..the only thing I might have done to make it a bit more realistic..is mask the horse and rider and applying a small motion blur ....
11-03-2010, 02:48 PM
Christopher Miller

Thanks for commenting, Paul. I'll try your suggestion of adding some motion blur and see how I like it.
11-03-2010, 05:24 PM
Anita Bower

Excellent post processing work. Great composition and action shot. I wish the horse and rider were not so dark, but that is a personal preference.

How did you use the layer mask you go from shadowhouse? I've no clue what to do with those dark ones.
11-03-2010, 08:18 PM
Christopher Miller

1 Attachment(s)

Thanks for commenting, Anita. I actually like the silhouetted look here and deliberately enhanced it in PS. In any case, there wasn't much detail in the horse and cavalryman to begin with since during the battle, the sun was in front of the line of spectators.

I applied the layer mask using hard light at 100% opacity. That made the image way too dark, but all the detail was still there so I just used two curves layers to lighten up the image before adding the rest of the textures. The image below shows how it looked when I first applied the layer mask and then when I added the curves layers.
11-04-2010, 04:40 AM
Anita Bower

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christopher Miller

Thanks for commenting, Anita. I actually like the silhouetted look here and deliberately enhanced it in PS. In any case, there wasn't much detail in the horse and cavalryman to begin with since during the battle, the sun was in front of the line of spectators.

I applied the layer mask using hard light at 100% opacity. That made the image way too dark, but all the detail was still there so I just used two curves layers to lighten up the image before adding the rest of the textures. The image below shows how it looked when I first applied the layer mask and then when I added the curves layers.

It seems you used the layer mask the same way as a texture layer. I have never used such a dark "texture" and also wondered why it was called a layer mask instead of a texture.
11-04-2010, 07:59 AM
Christopher Miller

I think it's called a layer mask because Jerry, the guy who runs Shadowhouse Creations, intended it to be used to create edge effects on an image like is shown here. So, yes, I used it in a slightly different way, but I liked the effect.