Week 3. One Four Challenge. (January)

Week three of January’s One Four Challenge is already here. This year is flying by so far. Guess I better enjoy every second I can in the blur.

For this week’s edit, I took the advice of other bloggers and went with the original crop but a softer focus. As a reminder, here is the original shot, which was taken while on a mission in Afghanistan in 2010.

For the picture below, I took the following steps in Photoshop CS5:

• Applied the HDR effect, which include:
  • Turned down the details for softer focus.
  • Bumped up the saturation and vibrance for more dramatic colors.
  • Pushed up the strength for the dreamy haze.
• Touched up the brightness and contrast.

I seem to go back and forth with the HDR or blurred layers when trying to make things have a “dreamy” look as I am not really sure if one option has more appeal than the other. The HDR way is certainly faster than making different layers and erasing out certain objects. Does anyone else have a different way or opinion on how they create dreaminess?

Thanks for all the comments last week by the way. I really enjoy hearing all the ideas on different ways to edit. This group is certainly fun and I am learning a lot and more importantly, getting to know some pretty cool people!

If you are not familiar with the challenge, check out other bloggers’ submissions to the One Four Challenge by clicking on the badge below or searching the tag ‘One Four Challenge’ in the reader.