Happy New year everyone. I spent the New Year with friends in Scotland, walking, sightseeing, and taking a few pictures - in between inbibing in the occasional alchoholic drink :dizzy: :dizzy: :dizzy:

On the last day of my visit we paid a call to the coastal town of Girvan, which is between Ayr and Stranraer and southwest of the city of Glasgow, for what is known in Scotland as a fish supper (plain old fish and chips where I come from). Unfortunately we arrived a little late for taking pictures (the light was fading fast) and I only had time to take this one as we descended down the hill road to the coast. The island out to sea (which is about 1,000ft high) is called Ailsa Craig and is in fact the tip of a long extinct volcano.

Here's my attempt at a watercolor.

Copy the background layer and desaturate
Copy desaturated layer and invert, then set mode to Color Dodge
Use Gaussian Blur to taste then merge the top two (copy) layers
Set the mode of the single copy layer to Hard Light and Opacity to 50%
Flatten the image
Set Levels to 40, 1.00, 255
Set Saturation to +55

What a beautiful scene.

I was inspired by your watercolor, so tried my hand.

FantasticMachine Paint Engine: blur water
Remove white specs
Enhanced contrast/saturation

-Jeff

I made this in paint shop pro its a pencil drawing, i made up myself by just pressing buttons, now i do these kind of drawings for friends.

Half yer luck Mal, I cannie think o' a better place to be at Hogmanay! So you had a wee dram or twa o' the guid stuff? I hail from Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth, it's been a lang time since I celebrated a Hogmanay there. However, we've done our best to make up for it here in Australia with our Scottish friends.

Thanks for the rare photo, understandably I couldn't resist having a go.

Done in Painter 8.1 with Watercolour Brushes.

Sorry I couldn't resist bringing the volcano back to life. As penance, I did a watercolor like version too. For both images, I scaled the image size to 800 x 300.

LiveVolcano: A couple GradientMap layers & blended in the smoke & fire. Topped off with a couple filters just for fun.

WaterColor (bottom to top):
BG
A: Copy BG. Extract luminosity (vs simple decolor)
B: Copy A. Invert. SmudgeStick 3/7/2
C: Levels (to darken)
D: MergeVisible (A,B,C)

Turn off visibility of A, B, & C. Set D to Pinlight (100%)
E: MergeVisible (BG, D). Set to Multiply, 50% Opacity

Turn off visibility of D. Turn on Visibility of B.
F: MergeVisible (BG, B, E). Diffuse Anisotropic. Normal - 50% Opacity.

-Mark

Water colour in Photoshop

Thank you Mal. What a fascinating place it seems to be. Enjoyed reading your description.
Everyone seems to be in the "watercolor" mood. Here's mine done in ps7.

Looks like a place I'd like to visit someday. I really like Legacy Art's interpratation. Maybe you could give us a little more insight as to how you did it?
For mine, I adjusted the curves for the sea/sky, and the land seperatly.
I liquified the sky and pushed pixels around.... (for better or worse :) )
Then did some selective dodging and burning on the land.

Mal, I notice you have the Dimage 7i. I just bought a second hand Dimage 7 and I'm very happy with it, although the learning curve is a little steep. Now I know who to ask when I have questions :D

Cheers,

Phil

Another absolutely stunning photo from Mr Firth

Palms