How to...

... deal with water bombs.

[final version on my [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1323044]Kinda Horrigans[/url] journal]

Not a huge amount of editing with this one, but there are a few main differences. One, the bottom section of the image is darker so that the water can be seen more clearly. This was done using a levels adjustment layer - move the sliders in from the left and right to where they meet the edges of the histogram for increased contrast - and then a black brush on the layer mask to get rid of the effect on the arms and upper part of the image. Two, this one is sharper - so I used an unsharp mask to handle that, but because sharpening is a destructive process (i.e. if you do it to the background layer, it's done!), I used a duplicate layer and sharpened that. Then, on the bits I didn't want so sharp, I used another layer mask and a black brush (set on about 50% opacity) to remove the effect, especially around the arms and fingers.

Most of this was done in camera. To capture water droplets you need a nice fast shutter speed - this was about 1/2500 - and some decent light to highlight the water droplets (and so that you can shoot at a fast speed without bumping up the ISO too far).

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the feedback on this second journal so far! I'm glad that you're liking it - it's interesting to me but I always wonder how interesting it is to anyone else. It's also a bit scary to go 'yeah, I have to tweak my shots regularly, they're not actually that good!'... but I hope that the editing never completely detracts from the image. Fingers crossed at any rate!!

Tip of the Day:
Talking about histograms etc I saw a useful explanation of them this morning in this How to Master the Histogram article.