Practicing with color filters

wxwax

I've never used colored filters on my lenses. So I thought I'd try faking them by using the Photoshop photo filters.

I took a lousy old photo that I'd butchered before. It was shot on a plain, overcast day. I wanted to see if I could pump some life into it.

After messing around, I used a strong Blue filter. Then I erased it from the lower part of the pic.

Second, I grabbed a green filter and erased it from everything but the trees and grass. Then I played with Curves to spice it up a bit. And finally, I cloned over some of the cloudy sky, then masked off the Washington Monument (in the process fixing the lousy old mask I'd done a year ago.)

Again, it's not a good photo. But I thought it was kinda cool how the filters added some pop to a deadly dull image. I think I'll be trying this again.

Before


After

wxwax

I tried other colors first. I thought I'd fake a setting sun or something, and tried grays, yellows, tans and rich, dark reds. None of them looked good. I was surprised that dark blue made the sky jump. After seeing that, I figured green would help the trees. I shoulda tried red for the Cherry Blossoms, too.

cletus

Nice work sid! Are you using Photo Filter layers or using a regular layer filled with a solid color along with blending modes?

wxwax

cletus wrote:

Nice work sid! Are you using Photo Filter layers or using a regular layer filled with a solid color along with blending modes?

At first I tried Andy's method of Control + Alt + ~, inverted the selection, picked a color and put a gradient on it, blend mode Multiply.

But I ditched that in favor of the Photo Filters, and just masked them and changed the Opacity a little bit.