The Occasional Odd Crop

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Where: East Village, San Diego

When: A couple of hours ago (March 13, 2008)

Photoshop geekery: You wouldn't think an image this simple would require five Photoshop layers and three masks, would you? But that's what it took.

I had a devil of a time getting enough contrast between the wall and the sky, which were essentially two shades of bright blue (the wall is saturated just a bit, the sky lightened in Levels).

I used a black-and-white layer with an Overlay blending mode to wash out the sidewalk and the yellow curb, and two Curves layers (one for overall contrast, one for a bit more saturation everywhere but the sky). A mask on the overall Curves layer brought out the lettering on the middle Monopoly house.

I tried this photo in black and white, and it looked fine, but I liked that swimming-pool blue too much to dump it.