I have dedicated myself to including more purposeful content in this blog, including tutorials and guides for how I achieve certain effects.  I like to begin each of these with a disclaimer, if you will, stating that this is certainly not the only way to go about it.  There are always multiple ways to skin a cat.  I am sure you might find Photoshop Actions available that will accomplish similar effects, however, I like being able to control as much of the image as possible, so I opt to do a lot of work manually. 

With that out of the way, let’s start breaking down the process for creating the “285″ image, shall we?  Just a fair warning, that the blog below the fold is image heavy.  I just did not see any other way around it, plus I wanted to include reasonably sized images to follow along with.

The orginal image was taken with my Nikon D80 as I was merging onto I285 east from I85 south, through Spaghetti Junction.  I have always loved the big sweeping structures, curved around as they are but never had a chance to get out and photograph them.  Since Atlanta traffic is so bad, I stuck my camera out of the window and snagged a few quick shots.  With my camera on auto so I could also drive, here were the settings used:

Focal Length: 65mm
F-Number: F/5.6
Exposure Time: 1/500 sec.
ISO Speed: ISO-160

While I was able to capture the roadway with the right composition that I wanted, there were some other elements in the photograph that I did not want to capture.  Such as the truck.  There are some cars, though you cannot seem them in this sized down version, which come through the greenery a little as well that would need to be removed.  Also, the colors really didn’t jump out to me and did not fit the mood that I wanted to portray.  With no vehicles in the photograph, I envisioned this to be drab and lonley, not something associated with bright blue skies.

So I brought it into Photoshop for a little editing.  All of the instructions below will be given using Adobe Photoshop CS.  Unless someone wants to donate a copy of CS3 Advanced to yours truly, then CS is what you are going to get.  Also, the image size that I am working with is 3000 x 4500 (10″ x 15″) @ 300DPI, however, for the purposes of writing this tutorial, I have sized the image down to something suitable for web viewing.

The first step was to bring the photograph in and remove the truck.  You can accomplish this several ways.  You can zoom in and use the “Clone Stamp Tool” to remove the truck.  What I chose to do was to duplicate some of the trees to the left of the truck and paste them over it.  Using your selection tool, select a patch of trees to the left of the truck.  Press CTRL + J to copy the selection into a new layer.  Drag that layer over the truck and then use the eraser tool to trim away the extra unwanted areas.  Since these are trees, it is not necessary to be as precise.  Even viewed at 100% it will be tough to see exactly where the line is if blended correctly.  One step you won’t see here would be the additional removal of the other visible vehicle parts.

Now with that out of the way, we have a decent base to work with.  What I did next was create a new layer, just a copy of this layer, and convert that to black & white.  Whichever method you use to convert should be fine.  One easy method is to use Alien Skin’s Exposure plugin, which allows you the control over much of the conversion settings and process.  If you want a quick and dirty way, just press CTRL + SHIFT + U to desaturate the layer.  Move the black & white layer above the color base layer, then set the blending mode to multiply (I also dropped the opacity down to about 62%).

It basically washes out a lot of the color, which was an effect that I liked.  Not quite there, though, because it needs a little more work.  Above both of your current layers, create a new layer and name it “Yellow”.  Fill this layer with whatever value of yellow you want to use.  I chose #ECC906.  Then set the blending mode of the yellow layer to “Soft Light” and lower the opacity down to about 76%.  I wanted the bridge element to stand out so I used the eraser tool to remove any yellow that was on top of the bridge.

Next, I wanted to accent the bridge colors a bit so it would fit with the additional editing to the rest of the image.  Create a new layer and name it “Orange” (if you are in Atlanta name it “Ernge”).  Fill the layer with any value of orange (I used #EC8806) and set the blending mode to “Multiply”.  This color was a bit strong so I lowered the opacity of the layer down to 20%, which was enough to give the structure some accented colors.

At first, I had stopped there, but after looking at the image, I wanted to give the greens a little more pop.  Using the selection tool, select the trees to the top right of the structure.  Press CTRL + J to copy the selection into a new layer.  I adjusted the color (to a little more green) and changed the blending mode to “Multiply” (I also dropped the opacity to 58%).  I did the same thing with the greenery below the structure.

Below is the final image:

If you would like to purchase a print of this, and help keep food on my kid’s plate, visit my Deviant Art Store, where you can purchase this from 4″x6″ up to 24″x36″. 

As I mentioned at the beginning, there are surely other ways to go about doing this type of editing.  I merely wanted to cover one method.  I do not follow this method every single time, as many times the results of my work stems from a lot of trial and error.  I simply try various editing techniques until I land on one that gives me the result that I was looking for.

If you found this useful, let me know.  Word.