Immortal Beauty – Comet Leonard

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Immortal Beauty.

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A beautiful new visitor to our skies – captured by Jamie Cooper – Comet Leonard.

It’s been a while since I attempted this process – to give a wishful in-depth view. Toggle between parallel free view and cross-eyed viewing. Which do you like best ? Wishing you all clear skies.

Yes – it’s my own conversion process. How So ? Starting with the mono photograph, I make a copy layer in Photoshop, and, one by one, manually, I doggedly remove every single star using the rubber stamp. This gives me an isolated comet, if I’m careful to preserve its smoothness in the process. I can then subtract this layer from the original, which gives me the star field without the comet. Using “lighten”, I can then put the comet back on the star field, but now it’s movable ! It’s then easy to copy these layers alongside the original – so now I have a stereo in which I can move the comet slightly on each side, to place it where I want it in the 3-D space.

Finally I apply some ‘polishes’, slightly adapting the comet’s shape on one side – to give the comet itself some solidity. A small sheer on one side will make the tail slope off into the distance, making it look like the comet is headed towards us – (which it probably is in reality at the point) – and a subtle ‘warp’ on a small scale can make the nucleus look solid. So it’s all wishful thinking really – but it’s fun !

PARALLEL:

Comet Leonard - parallel
© Jamie Cooper Photography (Brian May conversion) – parallel

CROSS-EYED:

Comet Leonard - cross-eyed
© Jamie Cooper Photography (Brian May conversion) – cross-eyed

Bri