5 days of Photoshop Recipes ~ Day 1 ~ adding drama

happiest monday sweet friends...
how was your weekend? 
mine was really good... 
we visited a lovely local shop (lady of the lake) and they let me go camera crazy....
i scored a mint condition mountain bike for 40 bucks at the bike shop next to above mentioned shop....
i had 2 awesome, but super hot walks on the trail....  can you say sweat? :)
i managed to get my main floor vacuumed, dusted and spruced up a little.
had a lovely family supper at my parents, that included baby potatoes and green beans from John's garden....
and ended the weekend with a drive around the country side looking for old barns and abandonment to photograph....

lots to be thankful for.....

how bout you?  i'd love to hear a highlight or 2 from your weekend. 

so, i have much to share....  i can barely contain myself.... 
but i'm going to take a deep breath and begin with

5 days of recipe sharing!!

sound good? 

let's get started.....

with today's image.... above...
be sure to mouse over to see the before.... the difference is quite dramatic.

day 1 ~ let's add some drama...

Recipe: steps are the same in Elements and Full Photoshop unless otherwise noted:

Layer 1:
Duplicated the base image. 
Applied a gaussian blur filter at 67 pixels.  Changed the blending mode to soft light. 
PHOTOSHOP: added a layer mask to the duplicate layer and used a black soft round brush set to around 45% to remove the blur from the focal part of the image. 
ELEMENTS:  used the eraser tool to remove the blur on the main area to reveal the base image below.

Then switched the blending mode back to normal.
the result: a dreamy blur in the background... drawing your eye to the pretty table setting.

Layer 2:
Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer.  Checked off the colorize option box in the hue/sat dialogue box. 
Adjusted the Settings to: Hue: 230, Saturation: 25
Blending Mode: Soft Light 100%

Layer 3:
Added another Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer: Dropped the saturation level to -78.  Blending mode normal at 68% opacity.

Layer 4:
Added a vignette by selecting a soft round brush and black as the foreground color.  Brush opacity about 55%.  and painted around the edge of the image.  Changed the blending mode to soft light.  Then went to filter>gaussian blur and set the blur to around 35pixels.

.....

that's it for today....

see you tomorrow with some 2 fors..... and perhaps a little surprise?
and the day 2 recipe.....

 

xxo,

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