From One, Many

I find it is occasionally a good idea to go back and look at images you haven’t seen in a while. Often as not, a new idea may occur to you about how it might be interpreted. For example, the above photograph was taken about a year ago when I visited the gardens of Versailles, about an hour away from Paris. (Tip: If you go there, check to see if you can time your visit to coincide with a scheduled fountain display.)

The original was captured in film (Ektachrome 100VS). After the film from the week-long trip to Paris was processed, I didn’t see anything in the fountain series that stood out. But this week, I went back and looked over the slides again and I saw some new ways this one shot could be presented.

The image above is the full frame of the shot and was scanned on a Nikon ED-8000 film scanner and then processed in Photoshop CS3. The original scan, as a 16-bit TIFF file was the starting point for all four of the images shown here. The first image was processed using a very modest curves adjustment layer, a medium boost to the blue and yellow colors using a hue/saturation adjustment layer, and sharpening with the Unsharp Mask.

The next image involved only a crop of the original image, but the result is something quite different. The viewer no longer sees a large fountain, but might imagine a story of a female figure struggling up a waterfall.

The third image is an even tighter crop, followed by a conversion to grayscale using the Channel Mixer adjustment layer. The contrast was enhanced, with a more aggressive use of the curves adjustment layer than the original color image.

The fourth image started with the cropped color image, and I introduced one of the many filters available in Photoshop. The command sequence for this one was Filter > Artistic > Plastic Bubble. If you want to experiment with these special effects, be aware that the final result can vary considerably depending on the size at which the final result will be viewed. There is a control in the lower left corner of the filter dialog box that enables you to reduce the size on the monitor from the default 100 percent. Be sure to play around with the sliders in the upper right portion of the dialog box; their names vary depending on which filter is being used.

Finally, I opened the original scan (a TIFF file) with Camera Raw, a somewhat unorthodox procedure since the Adobe Raw tool is designed for digital photographs originally exposed in the Raw format. I made adjustments in the exposure, fill light, clarity, vibrance, saturation and curves tools. I then opened it in Photoshop, and used only the Unsharp Mask to sharpen the image.

I don’t know that any of these versions would be considered outstanding, but the point here is that you have many tools available. Just spending some time using them will enhance your skills for the times when you do get a great image.