Before and After #446

Here's an image I shot in Malta last year that has some interesting possibilities - see what you can make of it.

The game will last 7 Days and whoever can produce the best edited image (as judged by me) will be picked and it'll be their turn to post their unedited picture for all of us to take a crack at.

The participants must have their "Image Editing OK" turned on and they must provide at least a simple breakdown of how they edited the image, some entrants are a little vague on this point, please give us all details so we can learn and share tips. For instance if you use the unsharp mask tool or Smart Sharpen, provide us with the adjustments you used so others can try them out.

You can post multiple images, but the first image you post will be the one that is judged - all other images will be considered for knowledge and tip use only.
Feel free to comment and/or ask questions at any time. This is a good competition for learning new methods, so let's make it a bit more dynamic. I will be judging edits, not comments. Feel free to comment on the original image as well.

If you happen to be the winner of the game please start the next one with the title of the game and the following number. For example…the next game should read "Before & After #447."

Game ends Friday, 2nd November, 2012 at 8:00pm GMT.

HERE is a link to a RAW file :- https://www.dropbox.co​m …1qs7fo4wnb2y/IM​G_0973.CR2

And here is another (larger) jpeg :- http://flic.kr/p/dobPS​7

I loaded the raw file into DxO Optics Pro which fortunately has a module for the G11. The module has corrections for chromatic aberration, lens distortion, vignetting and lens softness correction. I reduced the exposure by a stop and brought up the shadows and increased the saturation. The picture looked like it was intended to be straight on so I used the force rectangle tool to adjust the perspective to be fully straight. The buildings have settled so there there is some waviness in the lines which give it character. I took a white balance off of the window frames at the right and set the rendering to match the 1Dx/5DmkIII/II which have a stronger contrast.

Then I worked on the crop. I looked for a while at what the striking feature of the picture was that made you take the photo and what it was trying to say. I decided it was the layered horizontal features, the repeating pattern of doors and windows left to right across these buildings along with their texture and colours so I cropped out everything that didn't support this and saved it out as a 16 bit tiff. The 16:9 ratio is popular these days since it matches TVs and some monitors.

Next I loaded the tiff into Photoshop CS2. I adjusted the levels a bit more, then I thought it needed a point of interest so I selected around the person in the window and lightened them a bit more. There was a partly cut off window at the bottom right that I cloned out since I don't like incomplete items crossing the picture borders since it tends to draw my eye there. Finally resized to 960 pixels wide and sharpened with the smart sharpen tool (20, 0.5) then used the history brush to remove the sharpening where it was causing white edges like around the power wires. Then I did a save for web and optimized for 149.8KB to fit within the posting limits.

PS, I don't want to win this so hopefully others will put in lots of entries.

LR4- basic levels, tone, etc. Crop
PS6- duplicated layer, Filter\Stylize\Emboss. Set blending method to Color Burn. Set layer opacity to 50%. Merge, resize to 1000px long edge, save.

Night in Malta

Malta Graffiti

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

Used mainly selective color desaturate.

A little early folks but I'm out shortly.

macroimage - a great fix - well straightened up and clean as well. Good crop.
T3 Heavy Shop - Good colour saturation and use of blend mode - I like this.
JasonC - Innovative crop and use of the lamp/flare. Well done.
MrGman65 - Clean and straight with good framing
yb98 - I didn't think I'd like a de-saturated image but this works well

However, my kind of edit goes with T3 Heavy Shop this week so its over to you!

Thanks to all for taking part.

Thanks Nigel.
Nice edits everyone.
Next up HERE

Way to go T3! Well done everyone, and thanks for the challenge Nigel.


Jason C

Nice job everyone.