Golden dance...

... or... the denial that Autumn is fast approaching is coming to an end!

[finished version on my [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1379463]Kinda Horrigans[/url] journal]

An Autumnal feel and then some to this! Processing wasn't a great deal but I was after some boosted warm colours. So, the RAW file was processed by increasing the blacks to 15, increasing exposure and brightness just a little... then upping vibrance and clarity just a little - RAW files are really 'flat' if you don't tweak them at all, which can be fine sometimes, but I wanted to kick-start my Photoshopping a bit!

In Photoshop I gave it more depth by using a few layers in this order from Background layer upwards...

* Colour fill - gold, set to multiply blend mode on about 40% opacity (warms up the tones)
* Gradient fill - soft golden colours, radial fill, set to about 30% opacity and using soft light blend mode (gives a warm glow to the centre)
* Curves - darkened and about 10% opacity on multiply blend (gives a nice rich background)
* Levels - midtones at 0.90 (adds some more depth)
* Curves - no adjustment but set to soft light and about 50% opacity (this really brightens everything)
* Colour balance - yellow midtones bumped -10 to the left

Then, flattened... sharpened... and saved. All the layers stuff looks complicated, but all you need to do once you've worked out a combination that does what you want is to write it down and then record it and save it as an action - remembering to give it a meaningful name. That means that next time you want to edit your image, you just play the action and then tweak as you need. Saves oodles of time!

Tip of the Day:

This little tutorial takes you through How to Create Photoshop Actions - so if you fancy having a go, it's straight forward and this will push you in the right direction! Start with an action which takes the time out of doing something simple and then go from there.