flinch67 just made a comment on one of my pictures:
"Mate, you just keep 'em coming, don't you. I'm not complaining though. Maybe you could do a tutorial for us lesser mortals? "

So here's what I did:

1. Sell up and make enough money from the sale that you can emmigrate and not worry about finding a job for a year and just bum around playing with Bryce 24/7 learning from the masters on R'osity.

2. Pretty much it.

Hope that helps. :-)

OK, here's a real photoshop tip (I do this on pretty much everything now) try it out and trust me...

Run autolevels on the Bryce picture to sort out the ambience (sometimes needs fading a bit). Duplicate the Bryce layer, do a gausian blur of about 12.6 on the new layer (don't ask why it's 12.6 ;-) and then reduce the opacity of the layer to about 45% and you get a diffused effect without losing the sharpness of the picture.

Nice tip, thanks Phil!

Thank you for spilling one of your secrets!

WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I have no idea what Drawbridge just said.....ROTFLMAO!

See Bryster, Phil has become an American already,lol!

I think this is wonderful. I tried it, and I absolutely love the results. Interestingly, though, when I did the first step on the image -- run autolevels -- one pic I had, with a completely gray floor, turned cyan. Bizarre. I loved the slight clarification/equalization of the rest of the image, though, and the cyan looked somehow normal, so I left it alone. Freaky-deaky. Then with the diffusion, the result was just fantastic. Thanks for sharing this.

Yeah, I tried it too and I really liked the results.

Okay, can someone give more explicit details for a Photoshop noob? Also, before and after pics would be great.

OK, drawbridgep's tutorial starts with

STEP 1:
"Run autolevels on the Bryce picture to sort out ambience ..."

This is found on the menu: Image>Adjustments>Auto Levels (Shift>Control>L for windows users). It is precisely what it says, automatic; there are no adjustment knobs or sliders, it just does it.

Next drawbridgep's instructions say to do

STEP 2: Duplicate the Bryce layer.

This is found on the menu: Layer>Duplicate Layer ...
You'll have a dialog that will pop up that will give you a field to name your new layer, or you can just leave it default. Whatever you choose. I just named mine "diffuse layer."

Now that layer is there, and it looks just like your other, so you won't see any difference, but it is there nonetheless.

STEP 3: "Do a gausian blur of about 12.6."

This is found on the menu as follows: Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur ...

You will get a nice dialog that allows you to type in the 12.6 as specified by drawbridgep.

STEP 4: "... reduce the opacity of the layer to about 45 percent."

Transparency are on the Layers dialog that I actually keep up all the time. If, however, you don't see it over on the right among your open windows, F7 will get you there or, on the menu as follows: Window>Layers. Change the setting of opacity to 45%.

That's it; all his instructions and where to find them. I hope this is of help. Neat tools to get a wonderful soft diffusion without killing your image's clarity.

Message edited on: 07/23/2004 15:29

Good stuff, I love picking up all these little tips from everyone...

Waldomac: Thank you! What a great translation...even though I use PSP7 and not photoshop, I did actually understand what you said AND I think I might be able to transfer all that to PSP. See what happens? Brits go to the USA and get transmogryfied!

Thanks Phil.