Light Levels and Colour

With the photograph of the barn owl the main things I want to change with the picture are the light levels to make it look like a dusk setting rather than day time and also remove the leather straps from the owls legs to make the shot look like a wild Owl.

To change the colour and light levels first of all I had make some layers to adjust the different colour and light levels and then combine the layers using the original to help keep the colour in the photograph.

This first image shows the layer set up to adjust the Saturation of the photo and this was also set to colourize. So firstly the image is set in black and white and then you can adjust the Hue of the photo as you can see here the top slider is set into the blue area. This gives this layer a blue tinge to the black and white image.

The issue with the picture above is you have lost all the colour from the owl in the original photo as shown below (if you look at the bottom right you can see only the original layer is visible)

By then merging these layers together you add the colour into the the black and white image with a blue hue which gives the result below.