The photograph above was taken in Alanreed, TX while I was following Route 66.
Processing Notes: I processed a single raw file using Adobe Camera Raw and adjusted the image until I liked the look of the door handles. I then re-opened the same raw file and used different settings to adjust the doors. I stacked the two versions of the image as separate layers in Photoshop and masked the layers so that one version was used only where the door handles were. I then applied the Highpass filter on a merged visible duplicate and set the blending mode to Overlay mode to exaggerate the detail (as described in my How to Wow: Photoshop for Photography book). I then created another merged visible duplicate, applied the Find Edges filter and changed the blending mode to Multiply to add more interest to the wood. I also applied a Black & White adjustment layer with a blue tint, lowered the opacity quite a bit and then masked the layer so it only applied to the flat wood areas and did not apply to the door handles or the vertical and horizontal framing on the door. Finally, I created an empty layer and painted with black around the edges using a mega-soft brush to vignette the edges. Here’s what the original image looked like with default settings applied in Adobe Camera Raw:
