chateau - South of France

[sanscrit]

Hello,

In a moment of weakness, I committed to producing a post card as a favor to someone who knows less about photography and printing than I do. Since I'm interested in the subject, what better way to learn than to have a go at it, right? The postcard has no commercial ambitions, but it would still be good to do a decent job of it.

I've got as far as obtaining an image from a high end camera that satisfies the 300 dpi print quality requirement, I've chosen the appropriate crop for a long format post card, and even have a printer lined up and ready to go. Here's the original image I need to work with:



The image above was taken in June at midday under strong sunlight (in order to avoid having to much shadow from the trees on the facade). In some respects, it makes the shot rather less interesting than a similar one taken with a low resolution digicam at sunset during the fall (this image has issues of its own, of course):



What can I / should I do in Photoshop in order the first image more attractive, and which tools within photoshop do I use to achieve those changes? The first image is the only one of the two that has the required resolution for printing.

I can see that working on the strip of dried grass in the foreground (i.e. making it greener as in the 2nd image) will avoid some distraction and draw the eye towards the subject at the center of the image.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to do that in PS yet. Also, any tips on how to make the sky blue?

A more fundamental question is: Is it realistic for me to try and get this image to print quality, when I have no prior experience with Photoshop?

Having said that, I've put a lot of effort into this so far, and don't want to give up now, but I feel I'm stuck.

Other improvements that aren't color-related seem quite obvious:

- remove trees in front of the facade (retouch)
- remove shadows on the facade immediately below the roof (retouch)
- remove iron hoop at bottom left of the image (retouch)
- darken white tree trunk on the right-hand side of the image above the small house (retouch)

Many thanks & regards

Gwillem

[Leighow]

Hello, ..... What can I / should I do in Photoshop in order the first image more attractive, and which tools within photoshop do I use to achieve those changes?


__________________________________________________ __________
(1)I can see that working on the strip of dried grass in the foreground (i.e. making it greener as in the 2nd image) will avoid some distraction and draw the eye towards the subject at the center of the image. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to do that in PS yet.

LOOK I LIKE IT AS IT IS -- IT IS ONLY A POSTCARD -- NOT A SOFA PAINTING. THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE 2ND IMAGE HAS BETTER LANDSCAPING!

__________________________________________________ __________
(2) Also, any tips on how to make the sky blue?

SIMPLE.. LASOO THE SKY AND REPLACE THE COLOR

__________________________________________________ ___________

(3) Is it realistic for me to try and get this image to print quality, when I have no prior experience with Photoshop?

WHAT IS THE PLAN ? I COULD PRINT THIS WITH MY EPSON 880 AND IT WOULD LOOK AS GOOD AS MANY POST CARDS THAT YOU BUY ON SITE.THIS WOLD CERTAINLY "RENT" THE PLACE FOR THE SUMMER!

__________________________________________________ _______

(4) remove trees in front of the facade (retouch)

I SAY LEAVE IT AS IT IS IN THE REAL WORLD

__________________________________________________ __________

(5) remove shadows on the facade immediately below the roof (retouch)

SHADOWS COME WITH THE LIGHT. I DO NOT MIND THEM THEY SPEAK OF A HOT CLIMATE

__________________________________________________ __

(6) remove iron hoop at bottom left of the image (retouch)

I LIKE IT -- IT ADDS A TOUCH OF "JE NE SAIS PAS QUOI"

__________________________________________________ ________

(7) darken white tree trunk on the right-hand side of the image above the small house (retouch)

SURE IF YOU WANT TO ... MY FORESTS ARE FILLED WITH DARK TRUNKS (MAPLE AND PINE) AND WHITE BIRCH. YOU CAN'T FOOL ME!


Gwillem


Here's my take:

1: Change the mode to Adobe 1988 and desaturate the color a tad
2: Isolate the sky twice and saturate the blue a bit more
3: Cut the foreground from #2 and paste into #1 and darken the green a bit to match image 1. Here you may want to "clone" the lawn as I did on the left hand side -- or wherever it is brown. Tricky because it has to look natural.
4: Go to levels and drop the white and black points and set the mid tones to taste (i.e. only a tad of alteration)
5: Flatten the layers and sharpen.

What do you think ?


http://members.rogers.com/hleigh/HOUSE.jpg

[Meerkat17]

Works for me Howie, I agree with all you have suggested, you have more colour in the one you have done than in either of the originals too! :lol:

Well done

David

[Dawg]

Put a stamp on it, good job and thanks for the lesson.

Dawg 8)

[sanscrit]

HOWIE,

I think your results are spectacular. It's posts like yours that make this forum so valuable.

Let's see if I can reproduce the same steps in the orignal high resolution image, now. :-)

Gwillem

[Leighow]

If you have any trouble let me know. Looks like a nice location.

Here in Canada this morning it is -25 Deg C .. but... the sun is moving towards Spring and I heard and saw my 1st Red Cardinal having a sing song.

See Yah

PS: After you change mode you may want to convert it back to 1966 web standard (I did here). Plus I always play a bit with color balance and I always see what happens with auto contrast, and I always take a last peak at levels (options) to see if all is optimized to my taste.

PPS: When I say saturate the sky -- I should have said .. isolate it (just a fast loop around below the tree tops and around the frame. Then you actually REPLACE the color by tipping the eye dropper on the sky and saturating (it takes a few repeats to pump it up). You can alter the sky's hue here -- but I think that you have to keep to this hue as it feels right re yellows.

[martcol]

Howie to me, you are the 4th member of the Trinity!

Martin

[Leighow]

Howie to me, you are the 4th member of the Trinity!

Martin

Bless You ! 8)

[ecobo]

5 minutes of work in PS6
http://www.e-cobo.com/random/ecobo_1.jpg

[1rushfan]

What started as a request for advice ends up being some guy slamming a pic out there saying "5 minutes in PS6." Good for you, PS race winner! Thanks to you, we can all see how bad we are.

With that being said, and the EDITING tool that PS is, the purist might agree with me in that you should take the picture right the first time. Everywhere we turn, people are putting on makeup, getting boob jobs, and covering what is real. Suddenly normal is not acceptable.

On the other side of things, and the CREATING tool that PS is, photography is an art, and with artistic license we can use anything as a basis for a piece, and can do whatever we want to it because it can be done. Art allows us to create our own existence.

My opinion-everyone is entitled to their opinion, and audience is everything. Never show a raw piece of meat to a hungry pack of wolves.

[Warman]

I was looking at "Subtle Interest" and was thinking that it would go to the "Am i cheating thread" all over again. When i read this i was sure of it.
But i cannot comment what i dont understand. Can you please explain what you are saying in a clearer way? Are you for large editing or not?
Not even going into ecobo's unfortunate remark but this is something that realy interests me and which i wasnt able to keep up with last time it was brought up.

[ecobo]

I agree Warman. I posted this photo not to exalt myself, but to show how easy it is to obtain good results with some fundamental editind. I think I was helping with a good idea.
Just THINK DIFFERENTLY! The original of this photo cannot become a good poscard with only levels and color adjusments. It needs a lot of manipulations to become attractive for the buyers. And this postcard will be for sale, right?
Sorry if I've offended somebody.
Best regards!

[1rushfan]

I do not mean to imply that I have taken offense. It just seems that we sometimes lack in the art of photography, so we make up for it by editing with software to create a picture that never could have been taken in the first place.

Sure, the Photoshop image is much better than the original. However, I think that there is something to be said for what is actually there...that's what caught our eye in the first place. So my question to all is this:

Are we photographers or graphic artists?

[hamburger]

Who could own such a palace?, how many people does it take to preserve such a paradise?

When I look at a picture I first decide whether I am interested in it.

I was. Nice shot mate.

Software allows us to make a picture into something it wasnt. Ill go with the first pic. Its natural.Spontaneous. I like it :wink:

[Meerkat17]

Are we photographers or graphic artists?

If you were comissioned to do a shot for a magazine of a bottle of ice cold beer you would dress the shot in the studio. You would use a fine spray to make it look as if the bottle had just come out of the fridge and other techniques for getting the lighting on the bottle just right, etc, etc.

Any work that is for the print industry its always worked on, not always in PS but also in the studio.

Even photographers that take shots of flowers for field books dress the scene outside in the field - they remove all dead flowers, grass, sticks, etc. before taking the shot.

So I would say that even as photographers you have to have some artistic ability too, this even applies to taking a simple landscape shot to know if a certain angle works or not.

Well that's how I view things.

Regards
David

[hamburger]

These are good points.

[sanscrit]

Hi all,

I take full responsibility for the fact that the emphasis of this post is on graphic design / image processing. It was never intended to be otherwise, and I freely admit that the reason is that the picture I have to work with (which I shot :-( ) is quite suboptimal.

Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity to retake the picture anytime soon, otherwise I would certainly strive to improve the photographic merits of the original. If you have any hypotheses or tips in that department, I'd most definitely be interested to hear / read, even if that wasn't my most immediate need when I first posted. Consider me eager to learn the specifics...

At the same time, I really do feel endebted to those who've put their expertise on the line in answer to my plea for help, and I wouldn't want them to feel bad retrospectively about responding with skill and sincerity to my post. This applies particularly to Howie and Nikolay, of course, who've been very generous with their time, and very specific with their advice. Thank you guys!

Sincerely,

Gwillem

[1rushfan]

I give credit to all who can pull off an amazing photo that needs no editing or those that can make a terrible photo an awesome image with software.

However, I do feel that they are two different things, and that you can have no clue of how to use a camera and create a miracle with Photoshop, and vice versa.

Perhaps the most skilled are those that recognize the weakness of their original image, and can correct in Photoshop once, but take the same picture perfectly the next time without the use of "digital makeup."