This photo reprocessing features the Els Pilons sculpture created by Esteva and erected on the Salou beachfront. The original photo can be seen in my write-up of a walk along the coastline of Salou back in 2012 when we stayed in the area as part of a family holiday. The sculpture is inspired by origami and represents a sail on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
The processing for this photo consists of a new crop in the same ratio to bring the edge of the curving path right into the bottom left corner of the picture; I have a thing for pulling lines into the corners of photos. Colour vibrancy and saturation as well as white levels have been increased and the picture has been given a boost in contrast too using a technique to take away contrast halos. This involves adding a new layer with the sharpness and contrast in it over the top of the original twice, once in Lighten blend mode, once in Darken blend mode. The Darken layer was set at a low opacity while the Lighten layer was less transparent and had a layer mask applied in order to remove the sky. This had the effect of giving the golden finish of the sculpture a more metallic sheen while taking away any sharp or contrast-generated light patches in the sky that would have caused halos around the sculpture’s edges.
