Back in the blog chair with a totally fresh image from this morning, I practically tripped over the annual Medieval Camel festival parade at the top of my lane here in the old ancient central area of French Beziers. I love these Mediterranean antique dressed parades, because they have so much rich photographic material!
Here were two horsemen in their jousting gear, the original image when moused-over has a dizzying effect on the eye, way too much going on in the colour department. So first I thought I’d play with it in Nik Color Efex Pro 4. Now I have my brand new 27″ Imac I get all Nik’s features, whereas before the old Imac glitched with Nik, anyhow, cutting to the chase now I can save my recipes for you guys and its printed in full below.
After the Nik color processing the image had a very red look about it, and also the horses nose had blown out with the cross processing so I quickly hand cloned it darker and I also knocked back the 2nd horses head highlights. (I’m still not happy with my fast fix and will redo it later)
I used just one flypaper texture, my old favorite Touchstone, this helped knock back the redness and added a grungy atmosphere that Nik had polished out.
Finally, with my illustrators hat on, I’d like to point out that there are two possible book cover format images here.
The left side, the horseman, the right side the horse, try covering each side up and you’ll see how an illustrator would make light work of this. For many this could be a problem, do they submit it as two images or the one full image? My advice to people who care to listen would be to create three images, these two Bookcover formats and a much differently processed third landscape full version, all very acceptable separate images for stock, happy days!
Nik Color Efex Pro 4 recipe;
Cross process TO1 strength 18%
Dynamic skin softener 25%
Monday Morning Violet 66% Brightness 6% smear 73% Color 52%
Flypaper Texture;
Touchtone @ 100% Overlay mode
Touchstone is from the Summer Painterly Pack
Please visit our Pack page or Combo Pack page to buy Flypaper Textures.