WONDERFUL NAPASAI

Just painted a photo from the session in Napasai hotel. See the “before and after” GIF and a small tutorial on moving palm trees inside.

Initially, this photo was made like this, without shadows or trees. I painted the sun and put it where you see it now. I didn’t set a goal to make it look realistic. Artistic painting and the image’s beauty were the number one priority. And I’ve done it all. I painted it. Made it look beautiful. Then I merged all the layers and saved the following image.

You can see from this photo where shades should’ve taken place.

And then, after a few hours I came back to see the result and realized that it could be fun to create a small illusion. Of course, denying the realism that I admire so much. I made a longer palm tree shadow which stretches from the left bottom of the image up to another palm which stands closer to the beach line. And I added a few more shades from another palm trees.

And yes, the sun is not where it should be. You can see it clearly. The shadow from one of the palms is true, while the others are a pure fake. If you look carefully on the vectors of shadows you shall notice that the sun should be placed within 50 meters from the beach. Even admitting that the shadows do match with sun rays it’s a total nonsense. There should’ve also been long, lasting shadows from the umbrellas too.

But I’ll never have them there. All this could have been painted though. The palm tree could have been moved to the right, the shadow angle corrected and new shadows from other objects painted. But it’s a “bunch of time” and I’ll better spend it working on “normal” photos.

P.S. I’ve done it! I upgraded this photo to the category of “normal” by act of will and managed to finish it, after all. :)

I moved the palm tree with its shadow to where it should belong. Now the palm shade looks almost like it should be. Although still having issues with curves of shadows and umbrella shades are still missing. However, the image is looking more natural now. The final photo is put in the beginning of the article. You can scroll it up and have a look.

Peace. 

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With kind regards, Eduard Stelmakh

stelmakh.com