Today I am going to try to illustrate something that I quite discovered by accident last night. I had taken a picture of an engaged couple, while doing her bridals last week, where he was putting the engagement ring on her finger. We had to do the entire shoot indoors since it was snowing outdoors so I wanted to see if I could add sparkle to the ring as though the sun were shining on it and the image taken through a star filter. I have tried this before but never been successful to any degree that I liked until last night. I recently told you that I have been learning to use masks in photoshop and so as I applied a mask to the star layer last night I suddenly discovered that my answer lay in that process the entire time because as I opened the mask with a very soft brush effect it made the rays go out to a small point, faded as it would with the start filter to some degree. The star filter still leaves the end somewhat crisp but with a brush in photoshop the stars as they are applied are all the same width from the diamond to the end and that is what had been bothering me in the past. Well with the mask those stars seem to diminish in size more as they should. Then this morning as I was trying to recreate a step by step of the process I decided to see if I could add some color to the rays of the star.So I added another layer, then added a color gradient to the layer, added a mask and redrew the star rays so that the color gradient would only show in the path of the light from the ring. I then added a few more layers around the original ring to give the effect of looking through one of the multiple image filters that used to be very popular in wedding photography. (I never used one because I couldn't afford them and now I won't need one anyway.)
Well I hope you have enjoyed this little blog because I enjoyed learning these new tricks that I can now add to my wedding images. You be the judge as to whether you would want the original image in your wedding album or one similar to the final image (#5), Of course they will never be the same as this one since the process of creating always adds the chance to do something different. The very first image in this set is what I had created last night. You see I didn't create it the same today because I had a chance to think about it during the night and this morning and figure ways to try and make it even a little better. I actually like less images around the main image as I did last night and I like to slight color that I added to the one today so even the next time I would try this effect I would add color and less surrounding images. Practice creates difference, not always better or worse just different. Whether it is better or worse would depend totally upon the viewer.
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