A Work in Progress: lightfuel



This guide was made for entry:
lightfuel
In Contest:
handle with care


Original image


step 1 of 12

Firstly I masked off the shells. At this stage I thought I might use parts of the left-hand shell also so I did them both. To get a good mask I used a copy of the red channel as it had the most contrast, then I used contrast and the burn/dodge tools.

Creation of lightfuel: Step 1
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step 2 of 12

The result after using the mask to delete the background

Creation of lightfuel: Step 2
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step 3 of 12

I opened the background image and deleted the parts marked here by using Content Aware fill

Creation of lightfuel: Step 3
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step 4 of 12

Next I used the dodge tool with a soft brush to brighten the 'light pool' area of the landscape

Creation of lightfuel: Step 4
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step 5 of 12

I duplicated the bright area to it's own layer, set the layer mode to Screen, and used the smudge tool (at various brush size and strength settings) to create this effect

Creation of lightfuel: Step 5
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step 6 of 12

I pasted in and positioned the shell. I then duplicated the shell layer and set the mode of the duplicate to Screen, to brighten it up. I wanted the bottom half to be brighter than the top, so I deleted some of this layer using a large soft brush at low opacity.

Creation of lightfuel: Step 6
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step 7 of 12

At this stage I lightened the background, and the shell to match, and further smudged the 'light pool' layer

Creation of lightfuel: Step 7
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step 8 of 12

Here I added the lightning on it's own [Screen mode] layer, and did yet more smudging of both if and the 'light pool' layer so that they appeared to blend in to each other.

I also used the dodge tool to brighten parts of the bottom of the shell and spines to match the brightness of the light effects.

Creation of lightfuel: Step 8
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step 9 of 12

I wanted the shell and light to be more 'focused' than the rest of the image, so I selected the shaded area, feathered it by about 20px, inverted the selection and used Gaussian blur.

I then used the Blur tool with a soft brush and low Strength to soften the top half of the shell.

Creation of lightfuel: Step 9
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step 10 of 12

At this semi-final stage I decided to delete the uppermost spines.

Creation of lightfuel: Step 10
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step 11 of 12

I decided the image needed to be more dramatic.

I flattened the image, duplicated it, then applied HDR Toning, using settings similar to these. [I flattened and duplicated it because you can only apply the HDR Toning adjustments to a flattened image.)

I then pasted a copy of the pre-HDR-toned image onto another layer, and experiment with different opacities and blend modes of the two layers until I achieved a look I was pleased with.

Creation of lightfuel: Step 11
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step 12 of 12

Final image

Creation of lightfuel: Step 12
( hi-res )

Final result

Creation of lightfuel: Final Result

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Comments

avatar CMYK46
CMYK46 says:

Great SBS, thank you.

(5 years and 2382 days ago)
avatar George55
George55 says:

Interesting image. Good SBS, thanks for sharing it.

(5 years and 2381 days ago)