The Skylight

[[Geoff Slocock]]

This all done in our site's Photo Editor page.

300 px wide. Enlarge in [^popup] or [^new tab].

This is the a full size jpg. Pixlr does not accept tiff's, which is normally what comes out of my pre processing software

300 px wide. Enlarge in [^popup] or [^new tab].

This is the processed and resized image

1. Image >> Crop
2. Copy Layer
3. Apply Filter >> Mimic hdr
4. Scale opacity to suit and merge down layers
5. Create another duplicate layer
6. Apply Filter >> Unsharp Mask
7. Scale opacity to suit and merge down layers
8. Image >> Image Resize and choose 1024 on the width

Of course the fancy work with layers should not be done when you are first starting. But learning how to do that will provide extra tweaking ability.

The intention here was to lighten the parts in shade and give more texture to the sky and to provide some extra crispness with the Unsharp mask.

I do more more complicated things in the Gimp. But Pixlr is rather good for our purposes in the early learning stages. The refinements I use too can not be picked up so quickly; and I too imagined it all would be a lot easier.

Another thing to be observed is that pixlr is much less scary because it does not have the full features available of an advanced post processor. It is, I reckon, a very good launching point for PhotoShoop or the Gimp.