As I was waiting for the guests to arrive at Venice town hall for the wedding I shot a couple of weekends ago I noticed some masks in a shop window. I took a variety of shots, from different angles, but wasn't convinced that any of them would work out as there was quite a bit of glare from the window, and I couldn't really get an angle I was happy with.
That said, I did try processing three of them, all of which are included on the following page:
Unfortunately though, despite the fact that there are some interesting elements in each of the three shots, none of them ended up being worth posting, and I was about to ditch all three when I realised that they might work if I combined them.
In terms of the post-production: first, I combined the three images by stacking them and using Soft Light blend mode and masks to create an image composed of all three originals. I then duplicated and flipped the image, then used another mask to blend this newly created layer with the three images below it. I then warped and altered the colour balance of the left side of the image and increased the overall saturation using the Channel Mixer. I also added some local contrast using the Topaz Adjust plugin.
I don't have a tutorial that covers this sort of montaging technique, at least not specifically, but many of the techniques I used to blend the original images are covered in my Working with textures: part one tutorial.
The end result is an image, in my opinion at least, that's faithful to the spirit of the original scene, but not the reality. As always, let me know what you think.
Oh, and this one works much better with the black theme.
