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How To Create Minimalistic Landscapes Using Blur Filters in Photoshop

 For at least 10 - 15 years I love creating abstract minimalistic landscapes such as beach and forest scenes in my post processing of photos using a range of Photoshop's blur filters.  Here's one of my latest images that features this (and other) techniques: The original photo was taken almost 15 years ago with a 7 megapixel Canon Camera, but I wanted to challenge myself and try to make more interesting image out of it.  Start I came across this image while browsing through my photo archive and kind of liked the scene with the woman enjoying standing in or close to the surf. Editing Steps 1. I expanded the image from its 4:3 ratio to a square format making the added part transparent. Then I selected the blue sky and erased it. As I knew I wanted to create an abstract image I searched for a cloudy sky and found a suitable photo in my library, that would make a more interesting sky than a bland blue one.   I positioned this sky a layer under the beach photo and go...
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Early Spring Day Recipe

Hello -
after shooting a lot outside in the snow or trying to take pictures in dense fog with occasional drizzle enhancing the blurriness of my pics, I browsed through my archives and found a shot I took on a sunny day in early spring a few years back.

Let me start with a before & after of the final result:

Early Spring Day


I wanted to get a vintage look with light almost pastel colors without losing the wonderful fluffy cloud so I first had to do something to keep the clouds that way.

Preparing the File

Instead of a lot of dodging & burning on the clouds I decided to make a HDR (picture 2) image from a single RAW-file that I wanted to blend with the image I exported from Lightroom (picture 1) to retain the clouds. I used a layer mask in Photoshop and erased the lower part of the picture with a soft brush.
(Please see layers)


The before picture o the mouseover is the result of blending these two versions.

 Applying textures
The textures I used are all from my build-your-own-texture-pack. This time it took quite some while to find the right textures. Because I wanted light & pastel like colors I couldn't use too grungy textures or textures with strong colours & contrasts. I found two that kept the light (Soft Melt & Light Fabric) while the others added the vintage look (Backside Paper)  & a subtle green tone (Paper & Stone).

Please check out the layers to see how I achieved the look:


The combination of the blending modes Multiply and Overlay helped too keep the light of the overall picture, so I only had to make minor adjustment with the final curves layer.

That's all it took.
Thanks for reading!!
Dirk
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