Beyond Layers Day 68 : Sweet Adjustments

This was a challenging lesson for me.  I knew it would be.  I watched the video twice last week, taking careful notes.  I had to let it sit for a week.  All those adjustment layers were making my head spin!

It really doesn't look like the cloudy and faded processing below.  That's in part because the gradient I chose was not black-to-white, but black-to-transparent.  I also chose a reddish color for the gradient, filling in the furthest black horse.   All the other layers in Kim's recipe are there with varying blend modes and opacities.

I veered from Kim's recipe on the final framing of the image.  I found out you can add some nice effects by tinkering with the blend mode and opacity of the Solid Color Layer used for the frame.   I really like this effect for framing. 

 Here's the original photo taken last summer at Menominee Park here in Oshkosh.  

Golden Hour lighting.

Kim gave us one of her lovely sample pics to practice on.  This morning, I ran through her recipe on the sample pic.  When I finally felt like I had it figured out, I deleted it, and started over.  Don't worry--I did that on purpose.  I wanted to practice it again ...  The 2nd time went rather smoothly.  I was so happy to finally get it -- after 2 hours of tinkering, and reviewing the video.    Only then did I feel ready to start in on the Carousel picture at the top of this post. 

Here's Kim's original sample pic so you can get an idea of how processing changed this image.  If you want the recipe, though, you'll have to sign up for the class.  ;-)

I'm glad I'm taking this class, and taking the time to deconstruct a lot of these recipes. 
Just the same, a canned PSE Action would be really sweet, too!   I see and understand the appeal of oll those actions, with 1-click processing.  Rest assured, these were done from scratch.