One Room School House

This was taken last fall in Steamboat, CO, but I've begun going through old photo's and reprocessing them using new techniques. This was processed using manual exposure blending.

I hope you don't mind - I really like the texture of the sunset-lit face of the building, with the wooden siding, roof and the windows reflecting the last of the sun. I brightened that face a little and increased the contrast a bit. Maybe a little too far.

The sky in this is really beautiful and you have a done a really nice job of preserving it, even for display on the forum.

kirk

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Thanks Kirk. I wrestled with both brightness and contrast on the building, but I prefer the changes you made.

The colors in the image are exquisite but really delicate - I actually posted my edit and then quickly reopened it in Photoshop and blended your original in color blend mode with my edit to restore some of the salmon pinks and oranges back into the edited lit face. I can only imagine the work it took to get it where you got it. I would probably do my edit again and tone down my original edit to the roof - this would restore some more color there as well. It is an iterative process that can drive one batty.

My original intent was to counter what I saw as the tonal values of the building getting lost in the very similar tonal values of the background - essentially the contrast of the image is pretty low. I thought that the sun lit face was a strategic place to pop the building off of the background without disturbing the natural lighting in the image. I probably went a little too far, and a 50% blend back into your original would probably work well.

Nice work.

kirk

Here's the blend, 50-50. I prefer this to my edit.

kirk

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One thing I like to do when I am trying to work out the tonal values in an image is to make a simple conversion to grayscale and then use the posterize adjustment layer with 3 levels to get a rough map of my shadows, highlights and mid tones - you may even want to go to 4 levels sometimes.

The attached image demonstrates the tonal issues I was picturing by squinting and viewing your image. The large areas of similar tonal value were what I was trying to work out, albeit not so super successfully.



kirk

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This is a super shot Jon and I love the sky in the image. I know you mentioned it's an older shot but were you able to shoot inside?

Here's my version if you don't mind. I know...it's probably a lot more dramatic than you prefer and it's no longer realistic but I really like the colors...kinda like a fall painting.

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kirkt wrote in post #13674994
One thing I like to do when I am trying to work out the tonal values in an image is to make a simple conversion to grayscale and then use the posterize adjustment layer with 3 levels to get a rough map of my shadows, highlights and mid tones - you may even want to go to 4 levels sometimes.

The attached image demonstrates the tonal issues I was picturing by squinting and viewing your image. The large areas of similar tonal value were what I was trying to work out, albeit not so super successfully.



kirk

Here's a redo of the OP with a few changes to the building. After you pointed out it became clear to me why I didn't like the building during my initial go. Brightening up the one face and giving it a bit more contrast really helps. Thanks for all the comments and examples.

Can you explain your last post a bit more. Once you create a posturized layer how do you interpret it and use it as a tool to in editing?

navydoc wrote in post #13675109
This is a super shot Jon and I love the sky in the image. I know you mentioned it's an older shot but were you able to shoot inside?

Here's my version if you don't mind. I know...it's probably a lot more dramatic than you prefer and it's no longer realistic but I really like the colors...kinda like a fall painting.

The building has visiting hours, but not 5:30 AM when I was there and I never did make it back.

You know I don't mind. And while it's not my style, I'm sure BIll will like it!

J-Blake wrote in post #13675172
The building has visiting hours, but not 5:30 AM when I was there and I never did make it back.

You know I don't mind. And while it's not my style, I'm sure BIll will like it!

Needs more yellow.

J-Blake wrote in post #13674413
This was taken last fall in Steamboat, CO, but I've begun going through old photo's and reprocessing them using new techniques. This was processed using manual exposure blending.

Note: The original posted image was inadvertently over written, so I replaced it with the last image posted.

Wow, that is exquisite!