Building the Image


The Molecola Sogni image starts out with a photo taken at San Galgano in southwestern Tuscany. In looking at the photo, I decided that the color was flat and a bit distracting. There were no dynamic or impactful colors; rather, it held an overall brown-gray patina. I selected the thumbnail in Bridge and then chose Open, Open in Camera Raw to launch the Camera Raw dialog box. (If using Photoshop CS or earlier versions, launch the file from the File Browser, which automatically opens in the Camera Raw dialog box).

In the Settings section, under the Adjust tab, I lightened the overall exposure for this image, moving the Exposure slider control to +2.30. This really opened up the shadow areas under the arches, flattened the sky to almost white, and brought up the details in the brick wall beneath the rose window. I set the Shadows slider to +6 to deepen the shadows to a pure black, and I set the Brightness to +94 and Contrast to +36. Finally, I set the Saturation slider to -100 to desaturate the color completely, reducing the image to black and white.

Switching to the Detail tab of the Camera Raw dialog box, I increased the Sharpness slider to 59, set Luminance Smoothing to 12, and finally clicked the Open button to open the photo in Photoshop (see Figure ).

Reduce to grayscale.

Crop and reduce opacity.

Cropping and Fading

When the modified photo opened, I selected the Crop tool and drew a square crop from the upper-left corner, holding down the Shift key to constrain the crop proportion to a square. I drew the crop to just above the ledge that buttressed the arches, showing a small piece of black archway in the lower-right corner. I double-clicked the crop to accept it.

I double-clicked the word Background on the Background layer to highlight it, and renamed the layer Cathedral 30%. Then I set the Opacity slider in the Layers palette to 30% to lighten the image. To introduce more translucency to the image, I clicked the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and dragged the new layer to the bottom of the layers stack. I filled this new layer with white by selecting the Paintbucket, setting the foreground swatch in the toolbox to white, and clicking in the image window (see Figure ).

Duplicate cathedral layers.

At this point, I had already decided to create a diptych, so I added additional canvas: I chose Image, Canvas Size and set the Width value to 2,967 pixels, clicked the right-top anchor square, and then clicked OK.

Multiple Cathedrals

To add complexity to the image, I dragged the Cathedral layer to the Create New Layer icon in the Layers palette, creating a duplicate layer. After setting the new layer's Opacity slider to 24%, I renamed the layer Cathedral 24%. To complete this layer, I added a layer mask and masked the lower-right corner, keeping it light and ethereal.

I duplicated the Cathedral 30% layer a second time and set the layer's blending mode to Soft Light. Then I selected Edit, Transform, Flip Horizontal to flip the layer, and used the Move tool to drag the layer to align with the cathedral images beneath it, placing it just above the Cathedral 24% layer. I added another layer mask and masked out the right side of the cathedral image (see Figure ).

Adding a Curve

The next step in preparing the cathedral section of the final diptych was to lighten the overall image using a Curves adjustment layer. After selecting Curves from the Adjustment Layer menu in the Layers palette, I added three data points: Input: 33, Output: 35; Input: 110, Output: 136; and Input: 202, Output: 241.

I initially applied this correction because I thought the tonal information in the stonework was flat, lacking in contrast and detail. This slight S-curve deepened the shadows a bit and lightened the midtones and highlight areas. An unexpected result of this adjustment was the added emphasis on the overlapping arch layers, which created an open, ethereal atmosphere (see Figure ).

Add a Curves adjustment layer.

Masking the Ledge

Now that the image was brighter, I started looking for other ways to emphasize the atmospheric patina that was beginning to assert itself. In this particular example, I noticed the ledge that was jutting out into the white space in the upper-left of the composition. I felt it was intrusive and disruptive to the composition, and I wanted to find a way to interject a bit more white. The area I wanted to add to was white and flat. In addition, the area I wanted to remove was geometric and linear. These characteristics made the following edit pretty easy to achieve.

I selected the Polygonal Lasso tool and clicked at the point where the ledge shape juts into the white sky. I then clicked next to the column and continued clicking to outline the ledge shape. When the shape was selected, I clicked the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a new layer, just above the Curves 1 layer. I named the layer Ledge Mask in the dialog box that appeared and clicked OK. I set the foreground color to white and selected the Paintbucket tool. After checking the Options bar to see that Foreground was selected in the Source pull-down menu and that the All Layers check box was disabled, I clicked in the active selection to fill it with white, masking the ledge in the layers beneath it (see Figure ).

Mask the ledge.

Adding Clouds

To play off the bright, misty cathedral composition, I went looking for some clouds to tie into the cathedral image. The Campo Clouds photo that I ended up with featured bright, billowy clouds that rose into a deep blue sky. I cropped the photo to remove the bell tower and focused only on the clouds and sky, which I pasted into the left side of the composition (see Figure ).

Crop to the clouds.

Adding a Gradient Map

The clouds photo was solid, but it was far from harmonious with the right panel. The color was distracting, and the blue tint in the clouds looked a bit unnatural. Because the black-and-white color palette was working so well on the right side, it was a natural move to reduce the clouds on the left to black and white. With black and white set as my foreground and background colors, I selected the Gradient Map option from the Adjustment Layer menu in the Layers palette and clicked OK in the Gradient Map dialog box. I double-clicked the Gradient Map name in the Layers palette to select it and renamed the layer B&W Gradient Map.

Because the Gradient Map layer tended to darken the right side of the composition, I restricted the correction to only the clouds photo. To do this, I went to the Layers palette and positioned the cursor on the line between the Clouds layer and the B&W Gradient Map layer. Pressing the Option key (Alt key in Windows) with the mouse pointer in this position changes it to the Clipping Mask icon. Click to create a clipping mask, constraining the gradient map effect to only the Clouds layer (see Figure ).

Add a gradient map.

Adding Drips

The tonal range was now harmonious, but the overall composition felt a bit too clean and crisp. The two panels were still not harmonizing as much as I wanted, and I felt the need to mess them up a bit. To do this, I pasted a scan of some ink drips into the composition and dragged it into position so that two circular drips began to resonate with the rose window on the right (see Figure ).

Add the drips.

Inverting Drips

Now came the task of getting rid of the white substrate of the paper so that the black drips appeared to be splattered directly on the image. I tried the Darken blending mode but I lost the drips over parts of the Clouds layer. The Overlay mode lightened the underlying image too much. I finally got things to work by selecting Image, Adjustments, Invert to reverse the Drips layer and setting the layer's blending mode to Difference.

This arrangement brought out the fibers and all the black pigmentation of the drips scan while preserving the tonality of the underlying layers. The entire composition felt more cohesive as well.

Having said that, a few of the drips were a bit distracting and needed to be masked out. Specifically, the gritty texture over the clouds in the lower-left area was a bit too heavy. With the Drips layer active, I clicked the Add Layer Mask button to create the mask. I selected the Brush tool with black as the foreground color and the Opacity slider in the Options bar set to 24%. I painted the mask in the clouds area to fade out the gritty texture and complete the image (see Figure ).

The final image.




The Art of Photoshop for Digital Photographers
The Art of Photoshop for Digital Photographers
ISBN: 0672327139
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 141

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