Painting Frederiksholm Canal with light

I received my Wacom Intuos3 6×8 tablet this week and I already find it to be an amazing tool and it is so much better to work in Photoshop with an advanced tablet like this than a clunky mouse. The way that the pen pressure can be set to for example opacity really makes painting with light so much easier and much more creative and enjoyable.

The first photo to receive the “tablet treatment” is the following Frederiksholm Canal mirror perfect reflection from an amazing evening a few weeks ago:

Click to see large size on my gallery! Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

A mirror of Frederiksholm Canal
Copyright Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

This is an against-the-light shot so I used the tablet to paint in a bit of light on the buildings originally buried in deep shadows. I also used the tablet to paint a couple of different vignettes and for creating layers and masking for sharpening etc. In an attempt to really learn the tablet I moved the keyboard and mouse to the side and used the tablet exclusively. It was a great way to work and I found that Photoshop and the Intuous3 tablet were made for each other. I didn’t use a lot of painting with light on this shot, but I think in this case even a subtle use has a great effect!

This image is also a good demonstration of how much gold is buried, not only at the end of a rainbow, but in the binaries of a RAW file. I had forgotten I shot this a few weeks ago and looking at the very pale desaturated, high contrasty and very unexciting RAW file I thought “why did I shoot this?”. But against-the-light raw files are always the worst, they look awful until you begin massaging the information out of the RAW file and after some digital darkroom magic the shot appears and I remember why I shot it in the first place – the gorgeous contre-jour light and colours!

5 Comments on “Painting Frederiksholm Canal with light”

  1. Love the effect you achieved with this tablet,I will be off to the USA in a couple of weeks and its on my list of equipment I am buying.Well worth the money I think!

  2. Nice image ,
    Yeah looking to invest in a tablet soon do you know is there much difference in quality of the different brands as they are selling bamboo tablets fairly cheap in WA

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