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Took this pier shot yesterday, and added the lightning from another shot.

What do you think? (despite the pole of the pier... i think that's from the diffused glow I used early in the processing.)



edit: updated whole post pretty much. revised version of the shot

Nice work, Owen. Looks real to me, and works well as a b&w.

Cheers,

AWESOME!!!!!!!!

Dramatic!! I like this very much

Owen - shall I just say I'm not up for chosing POTW this week, but if I was.....



Wow...I like this shot VERY much mate. Nicely done.

Can we see the colour version too?

Superb

That's fantastic Owen. I would never have known the lightning was added. It looks like it is meant to be there.

if you hadnt told us that you added the lightning, i wouldnt have known! well done, its an excellent image!

This is awesome!!!!! Definitely worth the effort you put in and more. Love it.

My only nitpick is the slight dark haloing of the closest railing/barrier. Possibly from the PPing?

Great shot Owen!

Looks great as B&W, but would love to see the original also

Thats a pretty surreal image there. Ever thought of applying a gradient map and see what funky images will spring out of it?

Thanks guys. Will take suggestions on board tomorrow, and will post the original (which isn't that special!)

Cheers,
Owen.

Hi Owen - as others have already said, you've done a great job of merging these two images. Well done

Have you considered cropping the foreground out though? I know you probably have an image in mind with the foreground rocks, but to me I think it would be stronger with just the pier coming out from the side, in a pano-style crop (cut off just above the rocks).

Maybe it's just my preference for pano shapes?

Dude! two thumbs up from me. Its very cool. Like a view a troll would get from his hideout

The lightning was taken from this image:

http://dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?t=24475&highlight=

and the original of the pier shot is this:



Basically I did the following things to create the image.

Convert it all to B&W using the desaturate tool. (Always try to create a new layer for each step.)

Lasso the lightning and feather by 50 pixels, then paste into other image.

Matching colours with the two images is very difficult, so from here on in everything was done in black and white.

To match the clouds around the lightning with the rest of the sky, I played with the levels and curves until I got a very low contrast sky, and you could barely see the lightning.

Then merged all visible layers, duplicated that layer and increased the contrast of it to enhance the lightning as well as darken the sky. Add a layer mask and do a straight gradient to blend the sky into the foreground.

Then fiddled with contrast of foreground layer to get it to match the mood of the sky.

Added a vignette by creating new blank layer dragging oval marquee around the image, inversing, feathing by 250, then filling with black and reducing opacity to about 60 or 70.



As I mentioned, somewhere along the line early in the piece I did a diffuse glow on the image, which stuffed up the pole on the pier.


Sheepie: that pano is a good idea, and just did a quick preview and it works... thanks for the idea

Owen,

I realy like this image, the dark allmost forboding effect works very well. I am envious of your abilitty to add the lightning I have no idea how this is done. My ability to process shots is very limited.
I have one question, please do not take this as a critisism of your photos or processing ability, its just something I have noticed in some other images that have been photo shopped.
I am guessing that it has to do with merging two images, the colour of sky above and below the middle rail of the safety rail on the far side of the pier is different except in the gap between the two sections of the rail.
It just seemed to jump out at me and caught my eye, it doesn't show up in the original of the pier thats what got me wondering.

Anyway its still a great photo.

Cheers Rick.

Hey Rick. Thanks for the comments mate. The difference in colours, or tones, is probably due to the way I played with the contrast. You've also reminded me that I 'burned' in some of the sky in order to blend the lightning in properly. I'd say any inconsistancy is due to that.