Blending Two Layers: Photo Plus Sketch

(I have no affiliation with any of the products mentioned in this article.)

We just moved our household from Coquitlam near Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. So...here are some images from the Nanaimo area along with a brief tutorial.

Today I'll quickly illustrate a technique that has many permutations and can produce some very interesting images. This is not a step-by-step tutorial and I'm assuming you have access to a photo editor that handles layers like Photoshop (which I use) or Elements. 

The original HDR photo shown below was created with 3 exposures in Photomatix. It was tweaked for exposure, sharpness etc. in Lightroom before taking into Photoshop. (click on for bigger)

In Photoshop the image was duplicated on another layer. To this layer I applied the AKVIS Sketch plugin. With this tool you can create various different sketch affects from a line drawing to a watercolour or charcoal drawing. After fiddling with the sketch sliders I came up with the image below:

So now I have two versions of the image, one the original photo, and one with the sketch effect applied. You can see in the Photoshop clip below the two image layers plus two more for the image title and signature.

 Note that the sketch layer is chosen. Note also that you have an opacity control on the upper right. If the sketch layer was set to 100% all you would see is this layer as it will hide the one below. The fun part is to experiment blending the two layers by changing the opacity until you get a hopefully good result. It doesn't always work like you expect! As you can see, in this case I changed to opacity of the sketch layer to 43%. I was looking for that magic spot where the photo just begins to lose its "photo" look and becomes something different. You can judge for yourself if the final blended version below is better than the orginal.

There are many different ways to use layers to blend image versions. I'll try to cover a few more in coming articles.

Port Mann Bridge Progress

The traffic coming west along Highway 1 will enter Vancouver via the new Port Mann bridge under construction and to be completed sometime in 2013. Meanwhile Metro Vancouver residents have been treated to seemingly never ending construction of connections, road widening and new ramps all required for the new bridge. The impact of even more cars and trucks entering the Vancouver area is much debated and soon to be experienced.

Here are a couple of photos taken today of the bridge construction. You'll see that one uses a long exposure technique (10X ND filter) to create glass-like water. The other image is made from three exposures combined and processed in Lightroom and Photomatix.

Trip to Grand Canyon and Zion National Park

Terry and I left for the first two weeks in November for this trip. This is a good time to avoid the crowds and still get in before winter. We stayed at a Bright Angel cabin at the Grand Canyon which was basic but fine. At the Zion National Park in Utah we stayed a the park lodge in a cabin which was much better than Bright Angel.

Overall, the Grand Canyon was spectacular and not to be missed on any bucket list. From my photography point of view Zion was more interesting because it has a more varied but still spectacular scenery. You may not see this as I did. Some photos (click for larger):
This is the Virgin River in Zion. Click for larger view. Very long exposure to get glass-like water. Minor tweaking in Photoshop. The next photo is this image with "digital painting" effects. Which one is better?

One of the many great rock faces in Zion. Colours range from almost bright red to white. This site is where the canyon begins to narrow not far from the Zion lodge where we stayed.

On the way we spent some time in Sedona Arizona. Oak Creek, which follows the road up to Flagstaff is full of many beautiful photo opportunities.

This viewpoint of the Grand Canyon is at the eastern end of the developed roads (a very small portion of this large canyon). In the distance you will see the painted desert area which I find very bleak but beautiful at the same time.

Mount Woodside Views

These three images were taken yesterday on Mount Woodside in Harrison Mills about 2 hours east if Vancouver. Some great view points and worth the trip. A truck or 4X4 is best but a regular car can make it up most of the road if you are careful and don't go when there is a lot of snow.


This fabulous view (click on to see larger) can be found at the launch site of the West Coast Soaring Club (http://www.westcoastsoaringclub.com/sites/mt_woodside.php). Paragliders launch from the ramp you can see on the bottom left of the photo with the wind vane flying. It looks directly over the Harrison Mills area where Kilby Beach can be found. You see where the Harrison River joins the Fraser River. The furthest mountain on the left is Sumas mountain and the city of Abbotford lies behind it. My next trip here will be early in the morning because the light will be better for the big panorama.


These colours were not brightened in photoshop. This HDR image pretty much looks like what I saw. Amazing BC winter colours.

3 Views of "Reality"

Some people believe that using Photoshop to change a photograph is altering what is real into something that does not exist. The truth is that every exposure in your camera is only a partial interpretation of what you are seeing. And of course, you know if you have studied perception, that what you are seeing is only a small bit of what is really there. I'd like to explore this using three pictures taken the same day of the same landscape.
Heres the first one taken and processed in Lightroom (click on for larger view):

I underexposed this to hold the cloud detail then used the curves adjustment to brighten the rock and trees the best I could. Sharpened and added clarity as normal. This does not really look like what I saw that day because the camera simply can't capture the range of tones my eye and brain were seeing.

The next photo show the same scene but I've put a 10X neutral (actually slightly warm) density filter on the lens and exposed on manual for about 60 seconds. This has the effect of smoothing out the water and losing detail from the sky. The bonus is that the rock seems to almost float even though it is very grounded. So is this version less real that the first one? Again what I saw didn't look like this because I can't effectively merge images I see over 60 seconds into one.

The last example looks closest to what I saw and is a HDR image made merging three images (light, medium, dark) in the app Photomatix then sharpening and adjusting in lightroom. As you see we have good detail in the clouds, reflection and the rock. This is the kind of result that Ansel Adams tried for by dodging and burning in his darkroom before digital capture was invented. If he were alive today, I don't think he would hesitate for a moment to use any tool that helped him achieve his vision.