Updated with a few more below
Some-time poster Andy did some of this on the Literary Cafe blog, and I thought it looked way cool.
I took one of my favorites from the recent genealogy road trip:
And turned it into this:
I went a little far, but shades of Maxfield Parrish!
Here’s a further step, with an adjustment layer that increases the saturation and lightness:
What do you think?
updated
I tried a few others. Here are some cacti from Sandy Hook a few weeks ago, pre-processing:
…and after:
And the Paulinskill Viaduct before:
…and after:
Interesting how it does something different to each. Also interesting how I can amuse myself for so long with a Photoshop 101 trick like this.
The original photo is really nice as it is. Somber and pretty. The effect gives the photo a scary feel.
I was kind of questioning the wisdom of using a really good photo as base material. The middle one is very “Halloween.”
I like the eeriness of the middle one. And the bottom one looks like a painting. Both are cool in their own way.
“I was kind of questioning the wisdom of using a really good photo as base material. ”
I’m glad you picked this photo. Oftentimes people will use these effects to “turd polish” so to speak. Sometimes it’ll resurrect a bad image sometimes it won’t. BTW Flickr’s a great place to learn about all this kind of stuff.
Have a nice Sunday.