Page 150 - Photoshop for Lightroom Users – Scott Kelby 2nd Edition

Chapter 6
Side Effects
Photographic Special Effects

I had two really good choices for chapter names for this one: either the 2013 movie Side Effects (starring Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum) or 2009’s
Personal Effects (starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton Kutcher), but once I read the brief plot summary on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database), I knew it
would have to be Side Effects. Here’s what it said: “A young woman’s world unravels when a drug prescribed by her psychiatrist has unexpected side
effects.” That movie might just as well have been based on me, because that’s my story. When I read it, it sent chills down my spine because (a) I’m a
young woman, (b) I live in this world, (c) it’s unraveling because... (d) my psychiatrist prescribed the drug trimethoxyphenethylamine, which had the
unexpected side effect of me growing a full head of long blonde hair on the small of my back, to the extent that my colleagues refer to me as “Pony Boy”
or “Pony Girl” or “Polly Grip.” It’s not funny. I have to trim that tail at least three times a week using a Black & Decker 12-inch, 18-volt Cordless Electric
GrassHog String Trimmer/Edger to this very day. Now, there was another “effects” movie title I could have gone with, which was 2012’s Lake Effects
(starring Jane Seymour and Scottie Thompson), and the fact that one of the stars was named “Scottie” was pretty compelling unto itself, but I couldn’t get
past the “Lake” part. However, once I read the short plot summary on IMDb, I thought this sounded even more like my life story than Side Effects. Here’s
what they wrote: “Sara and Lily grew up at Smith Mountain Lake. Sara became estranged from the family and without explanation moved to Los Angeles
to study law.” This is really eerie because I grew up at Smith Mountain Lake. I became estranged from my family and without explanation I moved to L.A.
to study law. It was there in Los Angeles that my psychiatrist prescribed the drug trimethoxyphenethylamine, and I bought my first Black & Decker
Cordless GrassHog. Every word of this is true.
Blend if Layer Style: Swapping Out for a Better Sky
Nothing kills an image like a cloudless sky, but luckily, replacing your bland sky with a better one is actually remarkably easy, thanks to Photoshop’s
Blending Options Blend If sliders. They do the work for us and keep us from having to create really intricate masks. It’s really just a few seconds and boom
—done.

Step One:
We’ll start by selecting this image—taken under a dull, cloudless sky—in Lightroom and pressing Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to open it in Photoshop. I’m
amazed I’m letting anyone see this at all, but it’s only because I have a feeling it’s about to look somewhat better.

Step Two:
Here’s an another image of some clouds taken just a couple of days later in the same town. Since it’s not a sky that’s all “shiny and blue,”I think it will look
just about right with the rest of the other image. Press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to select the entire image, then press Command-C (PC: Ctrl-C) to
Copy it into memory. Switch back to the image with no clouds and press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) to Paste it into this document, on its own layer. Next,
we’re going to need to convert the Background layer into a regular layer, so go to the Layers panel and click once directly on the little Lock icon to the
right of the word “Background” (as shown here). This unlocks the Background layer and converts it into a regular layer (and the Lock icon will disappear).