Hola! It’s been awhile since I’ve posted so I thought I’d start off with a “punch”. The original photo dates back to sometime in 1993 or 1994. Ugh that seems so long ago. The original photo because of the weather was a little flat. The conditions were FAR from ideal, although there are no harsh shadows, which was a bonus, but overall pretty flat. I took the photo and dropped into Photoshop Lightroom 2.2 and applied the Direct Positive preset. This sets the saturation level for a multitude of the colors that exist in this photo. However what I was left iwth was a pretty gloomy looking sky and I was hoping for something a little more “dramtic” do get what I wanted I imported this photo into Photoshop. The first thing I needed to do is select the background using the Quick selection tool. I really love this thing since it was introduced in CS3. I did a new layer via copy to put my selection on a layer of its on. I dropped in a vector mask and applied a clouds filter. Oh I forgot to mention I also dropped in a blue gradient too. The final result is the well “different” looking photo. I wouldn’t quite call this photo restoration  but the photo almost meets the criteria.

Hope you enjoy it.

Original Flat picture

This is the Punchy picture