Owl kindly asked me for a 1280×1024 version of my surfer photo to put on his desktop. I was quite honoured and have brought such a thing into existence. You are welcome to download it (click for larger version).
Perhaps foolishly, I’m not in the habit of keeping the unflattened copies of my edited photographs with the layer intact. I tend to just reduce them and save them for publishing on my photoblog. As I’ve started some to use some more complex techniques I’ve started saving them so that I can go back and edit more if I feel the need. I hadn’t saved this one so it’s a redo.
It was good to go back and do it again. The image on my photoblog was a cropped version, to make it large enough for Owl’s desktop I had to include more of the headland. My editing had made the rock face quite dark but I realised I knew how to make a transparent gradient on a layer – you add a “layer mask” and then add a black to white gradient because a black layer mask is transparent, allowing you to see the layer beneath and white keeps the layer in question opaque. Thanks Owl for helping me discover this! As a result there’s a little more definition in the rock face.