Endless Possibilities Challenge No. 147 - Monument Valley

just played with some adjustment layers and a bit of blurring in PSE

The image was finished in Topaz Texture Effects 2. Masking was done in Topaz to apply multiple effects.

Frank, thanks for the explanation! I am a big fan of doing masking in Topaz. I also have Texture Effects 2 but I hardly use it. Your image has inspired me to play around with it more.

Earlier today I was asked how did I create the colours in the photo I posted earlier.  I will post here as well what I did in case someone here is interested as well.

I am not really into art type photography but I dabble occasionally.  What I did in this photo was:

1.  use an Invert Adjustment Layer just on the sky using a mask.  The result was a bit "blocky" without smooth colour gradients is some parts. 

2.  So I tried a radial blur just on the sky and it then looked much better. 

3.  On the rest of the image I just played with a HUE/saturation Adjustment layer until I got colours that complemented the colours now in the sky. 

4.  Lastly, I used a Levels Adjustment's Grey slider (middle slider) to highlight the grass to help create a foreground that stood out a bit.  I then painted a mask on the Levels Adjustment Layer to shape the highlighted grass foreground into a sort of diamond type shape pointing to the rock feature in the hope of leading the viewers eyes from the foreground to the rock feature and the rest of the image. 

The blurring of the sky and the highlighting of the foreground help to ad depth to the scene which, to my eyes, was flatter looking in the starter image.


 

I was going to ask if anyone else thought it looked 3D, or whether it was my imagination.
Apparently not.