Many of the images that you take particularly cityscapes, like most portraits, can do with some spot fixing. I’ve been traveling through Europe a lot lately and because it’s considered almost de rigeur to smoke there, many of the photos that I have are littered with cigarette butts and assorted garbage.

And although you may not realize it, even small cigarette butts will detract from an image. A few minutes spent cleaning up an image can result in it having a way more polished look. Here are my top techniques for cleaning up litter and unsightly blemishes.

A word of advice before you begin: make a duplicate of the original image and work on this. Then you have the original image to look back at and see just how much improved the image is after the spot fixing is complete.

Spot Healing Brush

For simple spot fixes the Spot Healing Brush cannot be beaten. It doesn’t require you to make a selection of a source area to use for the fix so you can get to work fixing the image straight away.

Ensure your brush is large enough to cover the problem area but not any bigger – the idea is to spot fix just the problem area and to leave as much of the original image intact around it. Zoom in close to where the flaws are and paint over each flaw one at a time.

The Hand tool is useful here as you can press and hold the spacebar as you drag on the image to reposition and when you let go the mouse and spacebar the Spot Healing Brush will be still selected.

It can take five minutes or more to spot a really bad image, but the overall result will be significantly improved.

When you’re using the Spot Healing Brush tool, make sure that you have the Proximity Match option enabled, not Create Textures. Proximity match gives a better result with most spotting tasks.

Patch Tool

For larger jobs where, for example, the Spot Healing Brush won’t fix the problem because it’s too close to something with different texture or it’s such a large problem that it really needs a bigger solution, use the Patch Tool or the Clone Tool.

With the Patch Tool you make a selection around the area that is the problem, making sure that the Source option on the toolbar is selected. Now drag the marquee away to find an area to use as the fix. Sometimes you may need to apply this fix a couple of times, and you may need to clone around the edges of the area later on to improve the overall appearance and to add some texture back into the image.

Clone tool

To use the Clone Tool, select the tool, locate an area of the image that you want to clone from – this is your source image area – and Alt + Click (Option + Click on the Mac) on that area to sample it. Then start painting on the image – typically this works best if you click repeatedly rather than painting as painting tends to introduce repeated patterns into the fix which scream “Look! I tried to fix this in Photoshop!”

In Photoshop CS4, the Clone Tool has a preview so you can line things up neatly making it a very handy tool for fixing elements where there are lines or other things that need to be matched up in the fix.

You can also use the Clone Tool to add some texture back into areas that the patch tool has removed texture from even after the fix has been applied.

Healing Brush

The Healing Brush tool works similarly to the clone tool, but it has a healing ability built in so it’s a handy tool to use too.

With the Healing Brush tool you need to again Alt + Click (Option + Click on the Mac), to sample the area of the image to use as the fix, and then click over the area that needs fixing.

The healing aspect of this brush blends the solution over the problem so you could, for example, have quite a dark solution area in your brush, but when you paint over a lighter area to fix it, the fix will lighten as it is blended in.

In the example above we couldn’t use the Healing Brush to fix the water running out from under these plants as it would tend to want to blend in and darken the area being fixed when we need it to be lighter. In the case of the water, the clone tool is the best option because it lets us paint over the water area with lighter pixels without trying to blend in the result which would simply darken it again.

Take a good look

Once you’ve fixed the obvious problems take a good look at your image at 100% and see if there are things that are distracting to your eye that you may want to fix. These will generally be things that are lighter, brighter or in sharp focus as they are things our eyes are attracted to. If these are ugly and not really central to the image itself, then get rid of it. I removed some of the tree labels at this point.

To finish the image I added some color to the sky, adding some saturation and a curves adjustment and then cropped in a little closer.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Spot Fixing Images in Photoshop

There have been questions posted as comments recently asking about the role of Lightroom in a photographer’s workflow. Many posters who are not currently using Lightroom aren’t sure whether Lightroom it is an alternative to Photoshop or where it fits if you have Photoshop too. I thought it was a good time to look at where Lightroom fits in the Adobe line up and to explain why Lightroom isn’t a Photoshop alternative.

Lightroom was developed from the ground up as a tool for photographers and one which would provide a logical workflow for processing a lot of images in an effective and efficient way. Photographers have special needs for handling images from photo shoots and these aren’t necessarily reflected in how Photoshop is designed.

When you handle a lot of images in Photoshop you download them and preview them in Bridge. If they require fixing or printing, you take them via Camera RAW (if they are Raw files) to Photoshop. In Lightroom most of your workflow takes place inside Lightroom – Lightroom contains the organizing tools of Bridge and the processing tools of Camera RAW so, if it is an alternative to anything it is better seen as an alternative to Bridge and Camera RAW rather than to Photoshop itself.

In Lightroom you import only those images you want to use and manage inside Lightroom. If an image isn’t in the Lightroom catalog then Lightroom cannot see it. This is in contrast to Bridge which shows you the entire contents of folders on your hard drive. In Lightroom you can build preview images as you import them or later on and these are also stored in the catalog – this makes it quicker for you to view and work on your images in contrast to using Bridge.

Lightroom’s Library module also contains tools for managing images such as adding keywords, sorting and cataloging them.

The Lightroom Develop module is the equivalent of Photoshop Camera RAW and it contains tools for applying image wide fixes. You can use these on any image that Lightroom can import and this includes Camera RAW images, JPEGs and Tifs.

Lightroom also has a few tools which let you fix limited areas of an image, such as the Clone, Heal, Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush. However it is here that the differences between Photoshop and Lightroom are most apparent – there are lots of things that Lightroom cannot do that Photoshop can. Photoshop is a pixel editor so it can be used to affect images all the way down to pixel level – Lightroom isn’t. Photoshop supports layers and layer masks, Lightroom does not. Photoshop can merge panoramas, HDR sequences and align and blend layers – none of these features appear in Lightroom. In Photoshop Extended you can work with video and 3D – again these aren’t features of Lightroom.

Other modules

The remaining modules in Lightroom are SlideShow, Print and Web which are tools for displaying images either as slideshows, web pages or assembling them for printing. Some of the same things can be done using the combination of Bridge and Photoshop but this is where Lightroom tops Photoshop. The Lightroom tools work better because your images are already there, organized, open and ready to work with and the tools are very fast.

Where does Lightroom fit?

So, if you are asking yourself if Lightroom is an alternative to Photoshop, the answer is No! It is, however, a possible alternative to using Bridge and Camera RAW although there may still be times if you are using Photoshop and Lightroom that you may still opt to use Bridge rather than Lightroom. For example, Lightroom can’t handle the wide array of file types that Bridge can and sometimes you won’t want to import images into Lightroom – for example if you use stock images you may not want them mixed up with your own photos. In this case you may choose to access them from Bridge rather than going to the trouble of importing them into Lightroom.

Most people who use Lightroom report significant savings in the amount of time they spend processing their images. This makes sense as all your images, once they are imported into Lightroom are immediately available and you can edit them without opening them and changes are saved inside the Lightroom catalog and not to the file itself (unless you change the default behavior). Most people who use Lightroom also report that they use Photoshop less than they did before because many of the fixes they might have performed in Photoshop can now be managed in Lightroom. Since I made the commitment to Lightroom, this is my experience – much less time spent working on images overall and much less time spent in Photoshop.

There are many people who can benefit from using Lightroom to manage their digital photo workflow and there are many who will not. If you work with lots of images, if you need to apply the same fix to multiple images, if you need to get your images from the camera and out to your client in a very short time – then Lightroom totally rocks.

On the other hand if you create composites or spend most of your post production time on a handful of images perfecting them by editing them and crafting them into your vision, then Lightroom may not offer any significant advantages. Remember too, that any program will take time to learn and Lightroom doesn’t always follow the Photoshop style of doing things so there is a learning curve you’ll need to commit to before you will feel at home in Lightroom.

So, there’s my take on Lightroom and Photoshop. Now it is over to you. What has your experience been – do you use Photoshop less now you have Lightroom? Did you try Lightroom and not continue? We’d love to hear your opinions…

If you’ve not yet used Lightroom but think it might be for you – grab a copy today at Amazon today.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Lightroom: What is it and When Should You Consider it?

One of the areas that Lightroom 2 fell a little short on in my book was the Print module. I wanted to be able to print with a colored background without having to import a background to use as a Identity Plate to achieve the effect and I wanted to be able to assemble a single printed sheet incorporating multiple images but I didn’t want them to have to always be the same size.

Ok, so the good news is I am a very happy gal! Both these problems are fixed in the new Lightroom 3 Beta. In fact, the new print module in Lightroom 3 Beta totally rocks.

Over the next few weeks I plan to post on some of the new features in the Lightroom 3 Beta but today I just want to show off the new Custom Picture Package tool.

Get the beta!

If you haven’t used Lightroom before or if you are interested in looking at the new Lightroom 3 Beta, visit http://labs.adobe.com to download the free Lightroom 3 Beta. As always you should never trust vital stuff and day to day work to a beta version of any software – it’s there to work with and experiment with but you can’t expect it to be 100% reliable.

Ok, technical stuff out of the way, let’s get into the Print module in Lightroom 3 Beta.

Step 1
Start with a selection of images – this can be a folder of images or a collection. Click the Print module and select Custom Package. Click the Page Size button and select your printer and page size – even if you will print to a JPEG file you still need to do this – Ok, so it’s not perfect!.

Step 2
Get ready for the most exciting change to Lightroom in my book at least. Grab an image from the filmstrip and drag and drop it onto the grid. Keep the grid visible for now as it makes it easier to line everything up.

When you drag and drop the image in position, you can resize it as desired.

Step 3
If you want the container to match the image aspect ratio click the Lock to Photo Aspect Ratio checkbox. If not, deselect it and you can size the image to any dimension you like – so you can create a portrait shape image from a Landscape one, for example.

Step 4
You can now drag and drop a second image into the display and size it to any dimension.

If your image is larger than the container, hold the Control key (Command on the Mac) and drag the image inside the container to find the best position for it.

Step 5
Continue and add the images that you want into your display.

If you prefer to use fixed size containers, you can click to add specific size containers using the options in the left hand panel. You can then drag images from the filmstrip to fill them.

Step 6
To change the background color, select the Page Background Color option and choose a color to use. If you choose anything other than solid black, you’ll still see the grid lines on the screen but these won’t print and you can turn them off if they’re in the way.

Step 7
Click the Identity Plate and you can add your own identity plate as you could with other versions.

When you’re done, from the Print To options, select to print to a printer or to a JPEG File and you can then print by clicking the Print/Print to File button.

Step 8
Before you leave the module, click the + symbol to the right of the Template Browser entry on the left panel and type a name for your template so it is saved and you can reuse it again in future.

While it’s still not perfect, the Print module in Lightroom now has support for features that were not achievable with Lightroom 2 without complex workarounds and which will be appreciated by avid Lightroom users everywhere.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Lightroom 3 Print Improvements

There’s a great new site I recently found, that makes the process of merging Flickr images with virtual mapping, much quicker and easier; and takes the entire process to the next level. Although I’m a big fan of Flickr, for a long time one of its major drawbacks was that I couldn’t embed Flickr maps.

That was then, this is now; you’re able to easily create embeddable maps by combining Flickr and Map Flickr, a “powerful tool to create an interactive map with geolocated images on it using the Google Maps and Flickr API.”

First things first, to use Map Flickr, you have to be a Flickr member first. Indeed, DPS recently had a wonderful new beginner’s guide to Flickr, so I hope you’ve already joined. BTW, a pro membership of Flickr isn’t required for Map Flickr, but for $25.00 per year, it’s a reasonable price if you’re a professional, or are involved with, downloading and storing a large amount of bandwidth for your photos.

After you download your photos into Flickr, you need to create a set, which is basically a grouping of your photos by whatever criteria or category you determine works best for you. For me, I prefer to group my photos by the location where I took them– like I did with my Fine Arts Building story and shoot.

After you create your set, use the mapping feature on Flickr, and add them to your Flickr map.

Now comes the fun part.

Go to Map Flickr and register, which is free.

As soon as you hit the “Find my Sets” button on the registration page, Map Flickr will automatically connect to your Flickr account, and a list of all of your Flickr photo sets will be available for you to view, and work with. From that point, all you have to do is to is just click Create Map,” and watch the magic begin. From this point forward, you’re able to customize your maps as well as being able to incorporate other features into your efforts, such as its sizing, the photo’s height, width, and so forth.

After you’re done with customizing you, hit the “Finish and Share” button to publish your masterpieces. That’s it, from that point, all you have to do is link to the map– or better yet– embed it into your website like I did.

With the foregoing in mind, I hope that you’re able to have as much fun using Map Flickr and all of its features, as I do, for anything and everything that may be beneficial for your photographic and mapping needs.

Because I’m both a photojournalist, and currently involved in the Mapping Los Angeles Public Art (MLAPA) project, it’s great to be able to just add a quick picture to my Flickr map, and then have it easily appear on my sites, with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Combining Map Flickr and Flickr allows for easy Online Mapping

Step 1

Start with the finished kaleidoscope image document. If you didn’t see the original article, here’s a link to it.

Step 2

Save a copy of this image and this time flatten the image layers – not any solid color or white background layer you may be using.

To do this, select all the layers containing content by Control or Command clicking on them and choose Layer > Merge Layers.

Create a duplicate of the image layer so you have two copies of it.

Hide the top layer for now and select the second of the image layers.

Choose Image > Image Size and read off the image width and height. Divide each by two and write down the resulting values. Click Cancel to exit out of this dialog.

Step 3

Choose Filter > Other > Offset and enter the values for half the width and height of the image. Select the Wrap Around option and click Ok. This offset command creates the repeating part of the pattern and it saves quite a bit of manual work in carving up the image.

Step 4

Reveal the top layer again and your canvas will now be complete. Flatten this image and use it to create your pattern. If it is a large design you may want to reduce its size to 25% or less before making it into a pattern by choosing Edit > Define Pattern. Type a name for the Pattern and you’re done.

Step 5

Create a new empty document many times larger than your pattern image and fill it with your pattern by using Edit > Fill > Pattern and choose your pattern from the very end of the pattern palette.

Step 6

If you start with a regular rectangular or square image you can create it as a repeating pattern in a similar way. However instead of getting a big empty area in the middle of the image you will have seams. Use your clone tool or some other tool of choice to remove the seams without touching the edge pixels. Then create your pattern and it will repeat perfectly!

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Master Repeating Patterns in Photoshop

Finding Textures

I typically shoot landscape photography.  And when I’m shooting a landscape, I’m looking at the big picture – where the horizon is, where the sun is at, the reflection on the water – everything.  However, textures aren’t about the big picture, though, they’re about the detail.  And we’re not always used to looking at the details.  A wall for us is usually the background – or something that’s just in the wall. But walls can make for some great textures, like this:

The walls in my house are old plaster walls, so mine might have a bit more texture than yours (and a bit more peeling paint, apparently, too – that’s artistic, though, right?), so try looking up and down instead.  The ceilings in my house range from subtle textures…

…to something with a bit more oomph:

Both make for great textures, they just give the resulting photo different looks.

Finally, my favorite texture I’ve found around my house is from the tile floor near my back door.  Because our garage is in the back of the house, this door gets the most use, so not only does the tile of texture, but the dirt that gets tracked in the house adds just that little extra bit of lovely texture:

Making Textures

A classic texture is just a crumpled up piece of paper:

Be sure to take the photo with the right light.  If you have the light shining directly onto the paper, there’s not going to be as much contrast between the hills and valleys of the paper.

There’s more to do to paper than just that, though.  Try burning the edges, or splattering it with tea or coffee.  

About the Author: Jennifer Jacobs is an amateur photographer who runs iffles.com – a site for photography beginners. She’s also addicted to flickr and you can follow her stream here.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Create Your Own Textures

While Gimp doesn’t have Actions, they do have scripts, and while there might not be as many Gimp Scripts as there are Photoshop Actions available, there are certainly enough to keep you busy for a while.

Finding Scripts

You can find the Gimp Plugin registry here.  This site contains scripts and plugins.  Plugins increase the fuctionality of Gimp somehow (like the ability to support RAW files), and scripts are like Photoshop actions – ways to manipulate the photos you are editing.  On the right hand side is a Keyword search.  Here you can search for the type of thing you’re looking for.  Want to add a watermark to all your photos?  Search for Watermark.  Want to make a vintage-looking photo? Search for vintage.

If you’re not really sure what you’re looking for but just want to be inspired, instead of doing a keyword search, try scrolling down on the front page until you see the Browse the Registry options.  Sometimes I’ll take a look at the tag cloud, which shows you popular tags that people use to describe their plugins/scripts.  Note: Scripts (as opposed to plugins)

Installing Scripts

To install a script, first you need to figure out where they go on your computer.  This is going to depend on your operating system, where you have Gimp installed, and what version of Gimp you’re using.  To find out where they need to go, open up Gimp and go to Edit –> Preferences then scroll down to Folders –> Scripts, and it will show you at least one folder to put scripts in:

Once you find the script you want to install on the registry site, after the description, there should be an Attachment section – usually this will be a .scm file.  Sometimes you’ll find scripts that have a .py extension.  These are python scripts and you need to have python configurated in Gimp, which requires some downloads.  A full tutorial on how to do that can be found here.

Once you have the script downloaded, be sure it’s in the folder location described above.  If you had gimp open when you put it there, you’ll have to refresh your scripts by going to Filters –> Script-Fu –> Refresh Scripts.  If Gimp was closed when you put the script in the folder location, it should just show up the next time you start up Gimp.

It can be hard to find out where exactly the script went, though.  Sometimes the author of the script will tell you in the description on the registry site, but not always. They will typically show up either in the Filters menu or the Script-Fu menu.

My Script Recommendations

The first script I’d suggest downloading is actually a whole pack of scripts in a zip file (so you’ll have to extract it to the folder location) and is called Fx-Foundry.  It contains a lot of scripts that are probably more appropriate for graphics design than photo editing, but they do have an entire section of Photo editing scripts including lomo, cross-processed and vintage film.  Here’s the vintage film one in action:

I also like the Urban Acid script which looks like this:

Finally, I really like the split-tone script found here.  While the first step of this script converts any color image into black-and-white, I like to create a duplicate layer of my color images before running this script so that I still have the color, and then make the black-and-white layer invisible for a different effect.  Running it with the default settings, though, gives you this:

About the Author: Jennifer Jacobs is an amateur photographer who runs iffles.com – a site for photography beginners. She’s also addicted to flickr and you can follow her stream here.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Find and Use Scripts in Gimp

If you are like me you had a kaleidoscope as a kid. You would look through one end and turn a dial and the world would be displayed as a mirrored fractured shape. Thanks to Photoshop you can create kaleidoscopes from your photos. Any image with interesting color and shapes will work just fine.

Step 1

Convert the background layer to a regular layer by double clicking it and click Ok.

Step 2

Select the layer and use the Move tool to rotate to 60 degrees and position it over one corner of the image canvas making sure one side of the image sides crosses two sides of the canvas.

Step 3

Use the Magic Wand tool to select the empty background, choose Select > Inverse to select the shape and choose Select > Modify > Contract and contract the shape by one pixel. Now choose
Image > Crop to crop the image to the shape itself. It is important to do this to remove the anti-aliasing that Photoshop applies to the image edge as it rotates it.

Step 4

Duplicate the image layer.

Choose Image > Canvas size, click Relative and set the width to around 3 times the current image height (NOT its width), and the height to 2 times the current height. Select the middle top of the nine positioning boxes and click Ok.

Step 5

Choose View > Snap to > All and make sure View > Snap is selected. Click the Move tool and the top layer of the image and drag the left edge over the right until the W: value is -100%. Ensure the piece is lined up against the edge of the piece on the layer below.

Step 6

Merge these two layers by selecting the top one and press Control + E (Command + E on the Mac).

Duplicate this merged layer, select the top layer and choose Edit > Free Transform and, in the tool options area, select the middle bottom of the 9 point grid to fix the point around which the shape rotates. Set the Rotation to 30 degrees.

Step 7

Press Control + J (Command + J on the Mac) and then Control + Shift + T (Command + Shift + T on the Mac). This duplicates the current layer and repeats the transformation on it.

Repeat this until the kaleidoscope is complete – four times in all.

Step 8

Merge all the layers. Use the crop tool to select around the canvas. You can drag outwards if necessary to add back in any of the image that extends beyond the outside of the image canvas.

Step 9a

Now you can get creative with the shape. For example, you can make a duplicate of the shape and place it in the middle of the original shape sizing this second version down to a small size and then cropping the final image to a square shape. Use the Alt and Shift keys (Option and Shift on the Mac) to size the shape down leaving the middle in the same place and in proportion.

Step 9b

You can fill the middle with another kaleidoscope if desired. Here I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to match the colors of the two kaleidoscopes better.

Step 9c

You can select the shape and choose Edit > Define Pattern to make it a pattern. You can then fill a larger image with it so it displays as a repeating shape.

There are lots of creative ways you can use your Kaleidoscope.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Create Kaleidoscope Patterns from Your Photos

Use the Before/After options in Lightroom to check that the changes you have made to your image to make sure that you’re headed in the right direction.

Here are some ways to harness the comparative Before/After power of Lightroom:

Step 1

If you are in the Develop module you’ll need to make sure that View Modes are enabled so that you can see the necessary icons. To do this, click the small triangle under the image to the right in the Develop module and choose View Modes.

Step 2

You will now see a button which has Y|Y on it. Click this to see the before and after views of your image.

Step 3

From the dropdown list you can choose from multiple ways to see the before and after views. Before/After Left/Right shows the before and after views side by side – this works well for portrait orientation images.

Step 4

The Before/After Left/Right Split shows a single version of the image split so that the left side of the image is the before view and the right side is the after view.

Step 5

The Before/After Top/Bottom option shows the before image at the top and the after image at the bottom – this works well for landscape orientation images.

Step 6

The Before/After Top/Bottom Split view shows a single version of the image split so that the top half is the before version and the bottom half is the after version.

Step 7

You don’t have to use the buttons, however, and any time as you’re working on an image you can switch between before and after view by pressing the backslash (\) key. The image displays an indicator in the bottom right corner if you are seeing the Before version – no indicator appears for the After version.

Step 8

Sometimes you’ll want a “somewhere between before and after”/after comparison – such as when you are sharpening an image. In this case you may want to compare the image before sharpening and after sharpening but the before/after options won’t allow for this. ?

There are two workarounds. One is to create a Virtual Copy before you apply the sharpening to the image. Right click the image and choose Create Virtual Copy. This is your new “before” image and you can now apply the sharpening to it. When you perform a Before/After comparison you will now see just the result of the sharpening and not the entire image correction.

Step 9

The second works well when you’ve already applied the changes and want to compare the after with a previous history state. Locate the history state in the History list that you want to compare the final version with. Right click it and choose Copy History Step Settings to Before. This changes the ‘Before’ view of the image so it looks like the current image on the screen. Click in the History to return to the adjustment you want to compare and now, when you compare before and after you’re really comparing after with something more meaningful.

When you copy the settings like this you’re not removing any history so you can still revert the image to an earlier version using the history list.

Step 10

The Before/After view options are also selectable via shortcut keys and from the View menu.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Lightroom: Controlling the Before and After

Step One – In The Field

Step one of this process is to take the photos!  You’ll need two individual photos of the same subject.  I’d highly recommend shooting with a tripod to make life easier in the computer later.

Shoot the first image with a small aperture and in focus.  I chose f/36.  Overexpose this image by two stops.  These settings gave me a shutter speed of 5 seconds which introduced some blur into the far tree, which, for me, works in this situation.  ISO 50.

Next, shoot another picture out of focus, aperture wide open (f/4.5 in my case).  Overexpose this image by one stop with a shutter speed of 1/8th of a second.  ISO 50.  As my subject was a few meters away, I chose a focus point further away.  This still left some of the main subject defined.  Picking a point closer in gave a lot more blur.  This is part of the experimentation that is photography.  Try both!

Step Two – In The Digital Darkrom

1. Import both shots into Photoshop
2. With the second image highlighted, click Select -> All , then Edit -> Copy
3. Now, highlight the first image (the in focus shot)
4. Click Edit -> Paste.  This will past the blurry image over the clear one as a new layer, seen here.
5. With Layer 1 selected, click Layer -> Layer Style -> Blending Options.  You should now see a box pop up like the one below.  If at all possible, move this box to the side so as to be able to see the image as adjustments are made.

This is where the fun begins as it’s experimentation time!  As a good place to start, move he Opacity Slider to the middle, 50%.  Now change the blending mode to Darken.  This produces an acceptable rendition as seen below (after clicking OK)

Hard Light can also give an interesting effect.

As a baseline, this is a great place to continue fine tuning the image based on colors involved.  What happens if you only select certain color channels?  What about using Multiply?  Be adventurous!  Tweak and try out different settings until things are to your liking.

I’d like to thank Lynne, again, for introducing this simple method to experimenting with photography.  Please feel free to give this method a try and post a link to your results in the comments section below.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How To Create A Dream Effect In Photoshop