Confederate Soldiers

Our image was taken at the Usk festival with the Coolpix 990. Using a few of Photoshop's tool we can transform this image completely.

Our first job as ever is to duplicate the Background layer by dragging it over the 'Create a New Layer' icon on the Layers palette. Calling up the cropping tool (shortcut C) select the area of the image we want to crop, shown above, and double click inside the frame or press the Enter key to crop.

To add a sepia tone to our image from the Image > Adjust menu select the Hue/Saturation. Be sure to tick the Colorize box (see above) which will allow us to tone our image. Move the Hue slider to around 29 and the Saturation to 24 but try experimenting with these settings.

Now let's add some selective focusing to our image, this will help to concentrate on the two main soldiers in our image. Choose the Lasso from the tool box and draw around the two main figures (above left). Don't worry, it doesn't have to be a particularly accurate selection. When the two ends meet up the selection is complete and the marching ants appear (above right).

This has now selected the inside area of our image, so from the Select menu click on Inverse which will selected the outside of our selection. To give a nice smooth edge to our selection from the Select menu choose Feather and in the dialogue box enter a Radius of around 15.

The next stage is to blur the selection using Gaussian Blur found under the Filter > Blur >Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to around 2 pixels. The effect can be seen in the Preview window as shown above.

To add a vignette to our image, first click on the 'Create A New Layer' icon on the layers palette to create a new empty layer. From the tool box select the Oval Marquee Tool, short cut M. From the top center of our image drag it down towards the bottom of the image shown above. Now we need to Inverse the selection. Select > Inverse or short cut Shift Ctrl I and from the menu bar choose Select > Feather, setting the radius to around 15. You'll now have two lines of marching ants around our image. Set our foreground colour to White in the Tool box and call up the Paint Bucket. Click inside the line of marching ants with the Paint Bucket and this will fill the area with white. Press Ctrl D to remove the marching ants. See below.

To blend the vignette with our image try using Variations, Image > Adjust > Variations which opens the palette shown above. In the top left is our original image, we can change the tone of the image by clicking on the thumbnails in the larger frame. The image can also be made Lighter or Darker by clicking on the thumbnails on the right hand side of the palette. Once happy with your choice click OK.

We can now add some texture. First flatten or use the Merge down command, Layer > Merge Down to combine the Vignette layer with the toned layer. Choose Filter > Texture > Texturizer and from the drop down menu select Sandstone and click OK. Don't forget you can fade the effect after it has been applied using the Edit > Fade command or Filter fade in Photoshop 5

Once our vignette and texture has been applied as a final touch we can remove the distraction of the white tent using the Clone tool. First click on the Layers Create a New Layer in our Layers Palette to create a new empty layer . Make sure we tick the 'Use all Layers' under the option palette as this will enable us to use the clone tool on our new layer (see above). We can now start cloning out the distraction only visible when the vignette is applied......crafty eh!

The finished image.