Day 19: Works for me!

Welcome to day 19 of Thingadailies. Want to play along? The full video is here.

Today's starting point: 18:27

Ending point: (The end of the video)

There was a lot of stuff going on here, and I only caught some of it. But when has my lack of understanding ever stopped me? Onward!

Step 1: Put the birds in motion

The birds got a little linear blur, to add some motion.

Step 2: Blur the background

By adding just a little median blur of the background image, the foreground objects stand out more.

Step 3: Create a new layer from everything visible and add a vignette filter

That darkens the corners a little.

At this point, he messed with the colors a bunch. He desaturated the picture, but I decided I liked mine better the way it is. (I have simple tastes. I like overly saturated pictures. So there.)

He also added more fog behind the man, which I think would have made him stand out more if I'd followed directions. Live and learn!

Anyhow, here is the final version:

I quite like it.

What will I work on for the rest of the month? I don't yet know. I'm torn between finding a similar tutorial and just using some of these techniques on my own pictures...

Tip of the day:

Blurring the background a bit and adding a vignette frame work well to pull the eye toward the objects in the front and middle.