Early morning rain

Here in Dallas we've been deluged, drenched, and generally damp for most of an entire week. Early one morning I peered out of a bedroom window to see the street lights reflecting golden on the rain-slicked streets and sidewalks while the sky was just beginning to lighten in the east.  It was a scene worth saving, I thought, perfect for some Photoshop alchemy.

For this picture, my original photo was duplicated several times, and I used the Akvis Sketch plug-in filter on two of the copies. Interspersed with those various layers are three different textures which were bonus content from the Photoshop Artistry course I'm taking, as is the Roman-numeral clock face on the lower right side.  All put together with lots of different blend modes and masks.  Voilà!

White Rock Lake boathouse

A couple of days of pure Photoshop pleasure enhanced the view of the 1930 Art Deco boathouse on the western edge of White Rock Lake.  

I took the original photo on January 2 last year from the pedestrian bridge across the little lagoon that extends just behind.  The red wing blackbird, not in my photo although common around reedy shore areas there, came from a Creative Commons search of Flickr.