Welcome to the 31st week of Shoot and Edit: Part 2. Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes (also including previous editing tutorials). This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one “Turn the Hose On!” SOOC shot (this was just a suggestion, you can show us any SOOC shot). Hopefully you linked up with Jill’s blog earlier this week.

Each Thursday, I will take my SOOC shot and provide a simple/basic or advanced Photoshop/Photoshop Elements or Lightroom tutorial. You can then try my tutorial on your own photos and link up here – linky will now open EARLY on Thursdays and be open THROUGH SUNDAY. If you’d prefer, can simply share your own edit and show us what you did to achieve the look.

We want this challenge to be a learning experience, so feel free to teach us something new too! Also, it does not matter what editing program you use. Although I tend to work within Adobe CS5 (Photoshop), Photoshop Elements, Adobe Camera Raw and now Lightroom…it does not mean that you have to use the exact same program. I hope you’ll be able to take the concepts and apply them in the program you feel most comfortable using.

Much like last week, I started in Lightroom (I seriously love this program). I continue to find more and more free presets (in addition to the favorites that my friends are sharing with me). You can certainly process your photos manually, but I find that presets really simply the process. This week, I used SEIM Dynamica (part of the SEIM Power Workflow  set). So far, this set seems to be my favorite for clean processing. 

The nice thing about Lightroom is that I can COPY all of my adjustments from one image and paste them onto my other images. Considering I waited until a few hours ago to make my edits, this really came in handy! I then opened all three edited shots in Photoshop. I hadn’t quite decided which shots I would use for my composite.
As you can tell, I decided to blend my second and third images. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you’ll start by choosing the “harder” of the two images you’re blending. You’ll then copy your bokeh shot (or second image) and paste it on top of your first image. It will form a new layer. If you’ve ever worked with textures, it’s much the same concept. I then used blending modes to transition the image. Here’s the layers:

1. Background Copy, High Pass Filter, Soft Light Blending Mode, 100% Opacity
2. Second Image, Multiply Blending Mode, 100% Opacity
3. Second Image Duplicate, Screen Blending Mode, 18% Opacity

If you’re satisfied with how this looks, feel free to stop. I clearly don’t know how to stop…so I merged my layers and applied Mandy’s Vibrance action for a little extra POP. I attempted to apply texture on top of my composite, but it was too much. Here’s the final outcome (below)…what do you think?
So, to recap our lesson, today we discussed how to create a composite using two images.  Here’s a final look at my SOOC shots (top layer), Lightroom edits (middle layer) and final Photoshop edit (bottom layer).

For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past 30 weeks as well as apply today’s lesson or share something you’ve learned recently. I hope you all have a great Thursday and I look forward to seeing your edits. Next week’s theme is “Bright and Colorful” Have a great Thursday!

By the way, dont’ forget to add your edited photo to our good to WOW {EDIT} Flickr Group (for those of you that prefer to upload and visit that way). When adding your photos to the group pool, be sure to include the Week #, the Theme and EDIT in the description section. You may upload one photo per week. I also want to point out that we are all here to improve our editing skills. When offering constructive criticism (either on Flickr or within blog comment sections), be sure to point out at least one thing you really like about the edit before offering any advice for improvement.