Sunset. Making the Vacation Memory More Intense.

For this week’s AB Friday Forum, I decided to use one of my iPhone vacation pics. I was at my friend’s home in Florida and we went to sit out on her back deck. It was a beautiful sunset and so I snapped a picture haphazardly. Not set up or much thought, just a quick shot.

It was a pretty sunset, but as I look at it now, it really doesn’t do it justice. So, I decided to play with it some and make it more intense and powerful…and maybe a bit unrealistic. But hey, that’s what editing if for.

Here is the unedited original.

To get the picture below. Here is what I think I did in Photoshop CS5:

• Created a second duplicate layer.
• Dramatically increased the saturation on the top layer.
• Cloned out the dog in front of the fence (bottom left side) on the top layer.
• Erased out the pool area (bottom right side) on the top layer so that the palm tree reflection in the pool could show through.
• Lightened the bottom layer so that the reflection in the pool was more noticeable.
• Merged the two layers and bumped up the contrast and brightness until I liked it.

If you are not familiar with the After Before Friday Forum, you really need to check it out. It is a great group of photographers who take one of their photos and edit it. Then we show you the before and after pictures. Sometimes we elaborate on how we got the results and other times we just guess as we don’t even remember what we did:) Either way, check out Stacy’s blog Visual Venturing. She has some great editing tips AND links to other the AB Friday challengers as well.