How High is your Threshold?

Spent ages the other week taking photos round the town . . . . all the tourists were facing the harbour taking pictures of the boats and the sea . . . . been there done that . . . I had my nose pointed in a very different direction . . . wanted something a bit grittier to add to what I'm calling my 'Industrial' pictures.

The fishing fleet here is still a going concern and European Union money means there is going to be all new facilties to service the fleet. The new building is still mostly scaffolding and just what I was looking for.

So, the photo above is desaturated and tweaked a bit in Brightness/Contrast to give it a bit more punch. Levels gives you a more subtle effect but subtlety is not what I'm after when making brushes so I tend to use the Brightness/Contrast. Usually I whack up the contrast even more than this and then make it into a brush but I thought I'd try Threshold for a change.

This is a minimun amount of Threshold . . . . takes all the detail out but give you a really contrasty look.

Then a bit more Threshold . . . .

And then loads . . . . .

Love the change in this image . . . . it's something completely different now . . . you can do this . .

Here I've made it into a Brush so that I can layer stuff above and below it. It now has a multitude of uses. I've discovered the wonderful world of Youtube Photoshop tutorials and definitely watched one yesterday that had something to do with using threshold only I was watching so many that I can't remember any of it now!! Bit like eating an entire packet of sweets in one go and then feeling sick!! What's my motto? That's right - if one is good then more is better.

The stranger the better . . .

Soviet Era Roses? Who knows? Surrealism Rules! Actually that would be the subconcious rules then wouldn't it? I can only use these soviet images in a very small format because the person who sold me the CD of images saved them all in a ridiculously low resolution . . . something I only found out a good while later . . . when it was too late. More fool me. Not that I mind working small but would someone buy small? No idea if this would look any good printed out . . it's just a late night experiment and a very rough one at that. Please do not look too closely.

Random Red Sort of Chinese Looking Thing

No idea what happened here - I had a hankering for red, proper saturated red. I also had a hankering for salt and crushed black pepper crisps but I sublimated it with colour. Actually now that I've mentioned it the hankering for the crisps is back . . . it means walking down to the shops which I can't do today because I am both lazy and in pain . . . not a good combination. There is nothing chinese about this at all but somehow the combination of colours makes me think chinese. I am having a whale of a time throwing totally random things together.