For today's photo, we returned to the 17th century. To 1694, in fact. This is the Valentine-Whitman House on historic Great Road in Lincoln, RI. The house was built in the late 17th century by Valentine Whitman, Jr, a Captain in the Rhode Island Militia and a friend of Rhode Island's founder Roger Williams. Aside from being one of the few stone enders still standing in RI, what makes this house unique is that the very first town meeting of Smithfield, RI was held here. (At the time, Lincoln was part of Smithfield.)
While the colors in the stone are very attractive, I thought the color shot in general made the house look too modern. Instead, I opted to go with an old monochrome look to imply age. I brought the photo into Topaz Adjust to enhance the colors (and ultimately then contrast.) Back in Photoshop, I added a Gaussian blur to the outer edges, feathering the selection by 200 pixels. Before using the gradient tool to produce a black and white, I first pulled the saturation to zero, adjusted the hue a bit, and trimmed the lightness. I wanted to temper the extremes in the gradient, and this method worked. A series of photo filters were added to the blur and the main image separately. The final tone was a sepia overlay at 80% opacity. Numerous levels adjustments were added between steps to produce the look you see here.
