Theme: Dragon Kite

[Judy Howle]

We went to the lock and dam last Tues in late afternoon on a very windy day and an old acquaintance was flying kites with his granddaughter and reeled one in for me to get closer looks before he left. They were both very pretty and he said he hadn't flown them in 10 yrs and didn't remember where he got them. I replaced the sky as it was white and used a couple of filters, one from jixipix and Topaz Impression last.

[Dennis Bishop]

Your choice of sky was perfect. It's interesting but doesn't compete with the kite, and the clouds nicely parallel the tails. Great color combination, too.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks so much Dennis! My mind is slipping when it comes to remembering what I did when I have just processed/enhanced about 6 images, but I think it's coming back to me that I used Render > clouds with that blue and a very light color of that hue and then I used 2 or 3 filters on the clouds layer ending with Impression.

[Anita Bower]

A local gallery had a crayon art work exhibit recently which was excellent. This image reminds me of some of that art, especially the sky--very nice--I would not have guessed that you replaced it. The kite is perfect. I can feel the wind that lifts it. The colors are great.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks very much Anita. I'm amazed I could make the kite look so good when the sky was white and I underexposed by about 3/4 of a stop. I probably couldn't reproduce that sky if I had to but at least I have it in a layer.

[Diane Miller]

Neat find! You might play with the blending modes on the sky layer to see if you can preserve more of the detail in the tail. Was the sky in Darken mode? Some blending modes will cut into areas like that. If you find a better one, like Multiply, it may be necessary to lighten the sky with a clipped Curves.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks Diane. The missing parts of the tail were almost entirely invisible in the original photo and when I selected it, even with Refine Edge (tried it 3 times) I couldn't get any more to show up because there was so little detail there, and it was too small for ME to try to paint. I was using a wide angle lens so it's cropped a good bit. I selected it and placed it on top of the background that I created. Actually I added a canvas texture to the kite to make it match the background and it may have removed some of the tail. I'll look and see.

Neat find! You might play with the blending modes on the sky layer to see if you can preserve more of the detail in the tail. Was the sky in Darken mode? Some blending modes will cut into areas like that. If you find a better one, like Multiply, it may be necessary to lighten the sky with a clipped Curves.

[Diane Miller]

That can happen to the best of us! Here's a hint, though -- instead of selecting and placing it as a cutout, place the new sky on top of the kite as its own layer and try various modes. That way you don't loose any pixels, and may recover some that barely showed before.

[Anita Bower]

The breaks in the tails don't bother me at all.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks for the tip Diane. I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I wouldn't want to have to mask the kite!

That can happen to the best of us! Here's a hint, though -- instead of selecting and placing it as a cutout, place the new sky on top of the kite as its own layer and try various modes. That way you don't loose any pixels, and may recover some that barely showed before.

[Judy Howle]

I'm glad they don't bother you Anita.

[Cheryl Slechta]

This brings back memories of kite flying when I was a kid

[Diane Miller]

Thanks for the tip Diane. I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I wouldn't want to have to mask the kite!

But that was my point -- when you selected the kite that is the same as masking it -- a mask is just a selection that is placed on a layer in a way that is editable, instead of being cutout and copied with no chance of fixing any mistakes. But there is a way not to have to do that.

You have the kite with a white BG as the BG layer. There may be breaks in the tail or not, depending on the original exposure and how well you can tweak it to bring out fine tonal detail. But you can avoid making them worse by doing a cutout, which may be clumsy.

Put your texture layer on top of the BG layer and try different blending modes. One may let the texture show through in the white sky areas and not affect the kite. It can be a very easy way to work with textures, as layers -- you don't need some fancy program to do it for you -- PS can do it all. You may need to change things like contrast on your texture layer. Changing transparency can give clumsy results.

Or if blending modes don't work, there is a more sophisticated approach -- on the texture layer click in the empty area of the layer to the right of the name and you'll get the Layer Style dialog. I can't write a tutorial for it here but it can let you select how light or dark the tonalities are where the top layer will show through. The idea is, you don't always have to do a cutout and paste it on a new layer. Sometimes the tonal values will do an effective cutout for you.

[Dennis Bishop]

Good stuff, Diane.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks Diane, I am sorry I haven't made time to try that. I am familiar with the Blend If sliders and I will try it for sure!

But that was my point -- when you selected the kite that is the same as masking it -- a mask is just a selection that is placed on a layer in a way that is editable, instead of being cutout and copied with no chance of fixing any mistakes. But there is a way not to have to do that.

You have the kite with a white BG as the BG layer. There may be breaks in the tail or not, depending on the original exposure and how well you can tweak it to bring out fine tonal detail. But you can avoid making them worse by doing a cutout, which may be clumsy.

Put your texture layer on top of the BG layer and try different blending modes. One may let the texture show through in the white sky areas and not affect the kite. It can be a very easy way to work with textures, as layers -- you don't need some fancy program to do it for you -- PS can do it all. You may need to change things like contrast on your texture layer. Changing transparency can give clumsy results.

Or if blending modes don't work, there is a more sophisticated approach -- on the texture layer click in the empty area of the layer to the right of the name and you'll get the Layer Style dialog. I can't write a tutorial for it here but it can let you select how light or dark the tonalities are where the top layer will show through. The idea is, you don't always have to do a cutout and paste it on a new layer. Sometimes the tonal values will do an effective cutout for you.