{Day 24} ~ Obscurity

Day 24's prompt for Picture Winter was "Obscurity". The assignment was to "picture something frozen, something slushy, icy, cold, wet". And also to think about tones, when we shoot or when we post process the image, to see how colour tones effect a cold and icy image.

When I saw the prompt and read the assignment, I knew immediately which image I wanted to use for this. It's an image I took a few weeks ago, on Boxing Day.

I had wanted to post this image of snow ripples earlier and had spent some time processing it, trying different textures and tones and all, but I just wasn't happy so I put it aside. Today, I decided to go for a grainy b&w effect to emphasise and bring out the texture, patterns, harshness but also the sparkle of the snow. I'm much happier with the result now than with my earlier attempt.

I processed this following the "Grainy B&W" tutorial by The CoffeeShop Blog, using also the b&w texture and the vintage frame which I turned into a b&w. There is an Action to download and use but I still haven't worked out how to install actions. I've tried it a few months ago, trying to install actions so that I could use them in my PSE8's Action Player, but I simply couldn't find the folder you're supposed to put them in.

I was so happy to find another way of using actions described in The CoffeeShop Blog, by copying them into the effects palette. But Alas!, I can't find that folder either. I really don't know what the problem is. I managed to unhide all the hidden folders, I've come as far as ...Photoshop Elements > 8.0 > but then there are no Photo Creations > Photo effects folders. I've searched the harddisk, I looked into each and every sub-folder in the PSE8 folder, but nothing. It's so frustrating I could scream! The only consolation is that on The CoffeeShop Blog you can find the step-by-step instructions for most of the actions, so I just have to create all the layers myself until I'll hopefully find out how to use actions soon.

But what I've discovered in the last couple of weeks working through lessons after lessons of e-courses on post processing is that what I really want is the full Photoshop version...