* please mouse over to see the SOOC shot *
This is the top part of the Vigan Cathedral Belfry in Ilocos Sur, which I took last March. Vigan is one of the places I always visit (I hope to do at least twice a year) because I just love how rustic and how wonderful I feel whenever I am there. That being said, I have so many pictures of the same subjects, and whenever I pass by Burgos Park going to Calle Crisologo, I always look up to this belfry because of the chicken at the top. Hahaha.
I call this the "surreal" edition as this image was quite heavy with post-processing. Though it is, this edit was actually quite easy to do as I use pre-made actions on GIMP. Steps I made:
- Scaled image to 640x480.
- Ran the Retinex Image Enhancement set to Uniform, playing with the other levels to achieve the look I wanted.
- Bump the saturation to 100%, to make the sky more bluish.
- Added one layer of Kim Klassen "Aurora" texture, set to normal at 50%.
- Added one layer of Kim Klassen "Scripted Edges" texture, set to multiply at 70%.
- Ran the Urban Acid script, set to 40%.
- Ran the Unsharp Mask tool, set to 0.20.
This is the first time to use the Retinex Image Enchancement tool, and I think I like it a lot.