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Welcome to our first blog of 2016, here’s to hoping you, our Dear reader, had a good Xmas and New Year? 🙂
Just going through my old external hard drives and came across this Eastbourne shoot I’ve dipped into many times and was even lucky enough to sell a few, the last was to the UK Guardian newspaper.
I recall trying to process a similar image ages ago and gave up, so it’s always worth going back and seeing what else you can come up with. The thing that brought this to life was the Topaz Impression filter, as I’m sure I didn’t have it the last time I tried?
And now Topaz has their own automated Texture panel, we’re truly beginning to get spoiled for choice! I personally quite like both, Russell Brown’s Adobe Flypaper Texture Panel and the new Topaz app, both have their strengths, but to cut to the chase, you can try the Topaz app for free before you buy, HERE!!
So, for the processing, I turned down the whites and highlights in Adobe Raw and brightened the shadow as the shaded part of the breaker was almost black. Turning down the highlights muted the seas natural texture as its always easier to texture a textureless area, the less busy the image, the better. I then opened the image up in Nik color Efex Pro and created a new preset called ‘Gull’ which we’ll release later, but if you’d like to try, I used the Polariser, Reflector efex (gold) and Cross processing BO2 @ 39%.
I then used Surat Afternoon 111 Filter in Topaz impression, this made it way too bright and blobby so I did what I usually do and knocked it down 50% then saved and cleaned up the gulls a little and cloned out the few white holes it had left, oh, and I always switch off the Topaz Texture effect, after all, our organic based textures are all you need!
Finally, after trying a few textures from our last Distressed Painterly set I settled on just one:
Forest Patina– Soft Light @ 82%
Forest Patina is in the Distressed Painterly set.
Please visit our Pack page or Combo Pack page to buy Flypaper Textures. Or our Preset Page to buy Nik Presets.
We recommend : Topaz filters !!