No Polarizing Filter? You Can Do it in Photoshop
By Blair Howard
Here’s a neat little trick you
can use to add
the effect of a polarizing filter in Photoshop. It’s quick and easy and can add
punch to an otherwise bland image.
- Select an image with some details
in the sky – white clouds with a pale blue background. As you can see from the
screen shot below, I’ve chosen an image shot on a golf course. It’s a nice
image but the sky is somewhat bland – the blue is there, but it would be a
much nicer image if it was deeper.
- Now select the gradiant tool.
It’s in the tool palette to the right of the screen and may be hidden under
the paint bucket tool. Anyway, you can see it in the screen shot below.
Also look at the tool bar at the top of the screen in the second screen shot
below – there’s a dropdown box. Select the graduated checkerboard option.
- New go to the top tool bar and
select “Layer>> New>> Layer” as you see below.
- This will bring up a small dialog
box. In the “Mode” option, select “Soft Light” and the click on “OK.”
- The cursor will turn into a small +
sign. Place it at the top of the image, hold down the left mouse button, and
drag the cursor down to the edge of the horizon as you see in the screen shot
below. (I didn’t get it quite right in the screen shot – it’s not easy to
handle a mouse and two buttons with just two hands – but you get the idea).
- Release the mouse button and watch
the sky change. The blue should go darker as you can see in the screen shot
below.
- Now all you need do is flatten the
layers into one. The way to do that is to select “layer>> Flatten Image and
then click “OK”
- A little more tweaking – hue,
saturation and contrast and you end up with something similar to the image
below.
See? I told you it was quick and
easy. It takes no more than a couple of minutes. By the way, the image was shot
at TPC THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at Sawgrass, Florida. You can see the entire
18 holes in the Sawgrass Gallery.
Copyright
© Blair Howard 2007
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