Tom in Field

Posted By banehawi : Mod

Posted By Vin_Newton : Hi, hope you don't mind me messing about with your pic, but I thought I would try to imrove slightly on a basically good image.
I have tried to both create an atmosphere and shift the main focus on to the horse.
I cropped the photo...using the rule of thirds...making the subject the middle third horizontally and the horses head on the right hand vertical third.
I then selected the horse using the selection tool in PSCS5, saved the selection and made a layer mask using the selection.
Painting with black at 33% opacity, i did three passes on the mask, painting the bottom of the mask to black, gradually getting lighter towards the edge of the field.
Then I went to Filters-Blur-Lens Blur and blurred the layer, adjusting the focal length to suit the picture distance.
This gave me a gradual blur all the way up to the top of the picture, but thanks to the mask I had made on the layer, left the horse and the foreground unaffected, gradually blurring as the mask became whiter towards the edge of the field, then total blur up to the top edge.
T o get the haze effect, I used a new layer on top with a gradient of black to white at 30% transparency and masked out the foreground and field, and reduced the mask on the trees to give an illusion of depth/distance.
The overall effect I hope, is to position the horse as the main subject, reduce distraction off to the right hand side, and bring a little more interest to the picture by providing depth.
Phew...hope you like it... Cheers, Vin Newton