sorry it took some time but here is my approach:
1.
- noise reduction on this layer
- magic wand was used (many times with a tolerance setting of 32% and holding down "shift" in order to expand the mask) to select the sky OUTSIDE arch as a first step.
- having selected the entire area of sky outside the arch i clicked on "add layer mask" down right in the layer palette
you can see the result in in the small picture added for demonstration of the layers used
- finally i used "knoll light factory" on the this layer (NOT on the layer mask) to create the light rays
2.
- same procedure for sky INSIDE arch except light rays
3.
- used a copy of background, turned it into b/w (picture => settings => b/w) and then used "linear light" for the layer merging inside layer palatte
this resulted in an arch with way more contrast and fill light
4.
- reduced image size to 1024 px width
- merged all layers down to one
- used sharpening filter on the entire picture
(having reduced a picture in size it is almost always a very good idea to use a sharpening filter before saving the final image)
- image saved
1.
- noise reduction on this layer
- magic wand was used (many times with a tolerance setting of 32% and holding down "shift" in order to expand the mask) to select the sky OUTSIDE arch as a first step.
- having selected the entire area of sky outside the arch i clicked on "add layer mask" down right in the layer palette
you can see the result in in the small picture added for demonstration of the layers used
- finally i used "knoll light factory" on the this layer (NOT on the layer mask) to create the light rays
2.
- same procedure for sky INSIDE arch except light rays
3.
- used a copy of background, turned it into b/w (picture => settings => b/w) and then used "linear light" for the layer merging inside layer palatte
this resulted in an arch with way more contrast and fill light
4.
- reduced image size to 1024 px width
- merged all layers down to one
- used sharpening filter on the entire picture
(having reduced a picture in size it is almost always a very good idea to use a sharpening filter before saving the final image)
- image saved
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