How I Shot & Processed this Editors’ Choice Winner

Editor’s Note: Ever since photographer and retouching master Mohammed Sattar‘s photo “A Dream” was selected for Editors’ Choice, he’s been flooded with requests for a “how to” tutorial. Well, he’s delivered!

So, without further ado, here’s how this photo—which was created entirely from a single frame—was captured and processed in Photoshop and Lightroom.


A Dream by Mohammed Sattar on 500px.com

My Editors’ Choice pick “A Dream” is a single photograph as shown below, edited in Photoshop.

Original-small

First, I extracted the boat from the image using the “Pen Tool,” put it in new layer, and adjust the Opacity and Fill as shown below:

Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 8

Next, I applied a “Radial Blur” to the sky, adjust the amount to 50, chose “Zoom” for the blur method, and “Best” for the quality. As shown below­­­­­:

Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 8-2

Third, I made a Photoshopped reflection by creating a duplicated layer for the sky part and rotating it 180° to complete the reflection.

1. Create reflection:

Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 8-3

2. Rotate 180°

Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 8-4

3. Result:

4

Finally we add the boat back in to get the image below, and the time has come to move over to Lightroom.

2

In Lightroom, I adjusted the Temperature, Tint, and Contrast as shown below:

image

Then I adjusted the Split Toning as shown below:

image-2

Finally, I used some masks to adjusted some specific spots on the background, leading to the final result, uploaded to 500px and selected for Editors’ Choice!

A Dream by Mohammed Sattar on 500px.com

Here it is one more time, from original image to final shot:

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