I tried a new technique I saw in a lynda.com video but I went further and did more to it. The tutorial is as follows, very simple. The effect is to blur slightly and increase the blacks in a photo. Works good for architecture as in the video but I like it for trees too. Simply dupe the layer and apply a moderate Gaussian blur and change the blend to darken and then lower the opacity, start with 75%. Then use a curves layer to darken/lighten as desired and adjust opacity again if necessary. In addition to doing that I also used Pixel Bender oil paint on the trees because they weren't too interesting otherwise. Then I used Topaz Adjust and scaled back on the saturation. This probably isn't the best example of the technique but I kinda liked it :t3


