Learn to Photoshop
How it was done

This is how the image appeared out of the camera - flat and merky. Seascapes can be confusing to metering systems. Adjustments could have been made in Camera Raw but I decided to do everything on Photoshop to give it a strong graphic effect.

• The first thing was to move the boat with the colourful spinnaker to give the image a better balance.
  It was selected with the Lasso, given a small feather, then copied on to a new layer. The boat was dragged to a new position to the left.

• A patch of clear sea and sky was made to cover up the original boat. This was done manually as the Patch Tool would not work successfully here.

  Both these patches were merged with the Background.

• The image was duplicated in the Layers palette.
  This new layer was hidden and the Background made active.




• To give the image extreme contrast, a very steep curve was used with greatly increased highlights and shadows.
  Tones and details are lost but the aim was to go for a graphic-look.






• The top layer was made visible and active.
  An Adjustment layer for Threshold was added. It was left at the default setting of 128 giving a mid-balance for the black and the white.

• The Threshold Adjustment layer was linked to the layer immediately below it, so that its effect did not work on the lower image in the palette.

• I only wanted the Threshold boost over the sea, so the layer mask was used to conceal the filter over the rest of the subject.

• To merge the result in better, the 'Background copy' layer was set to Soft Light mode at 50% opacity.

• To increase the brightness of the red on the spinnaker, an Adjustment layer with Selective Color was added. Red was increased via the Red Channel.

• The final touch was to strenghten the front line of the sail nearest the camera. On a new layer, a fine pencil line was drawn down the diagonal line of the sail.

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