Matsumoto Castle 

Matsumoto Castle is one of the most beautiful in Japan. Although Himeji is said to be the most beautiful, I prefer Matsumoto.

Technical notes: This is a good example of what Photoshop can do. The original was a "postcard" slide, with bright blue sky and a brilliant red bridge railing.

The scan (using a low-cost, fast scanner) had already muted the color a bit, and brought down the resolution. Since the main attraction of the original shot was its snappiness, and this had been lost, I decided to toy with the image.

First I removed some distractions: people on the left end of the bridge, and a tower in the lower right background.

Then I ran the image through some filters, especially "blur" and "noise." Next I took it down to grayscale, back to RGB, and finally adjusted the color to brown. The result strongly resembles the sepia-toned prints of the past.

If I printed this on textured paper (I've had great luck with actual watercolor paper) it would look a lot like a real print. 

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