Before and After #464

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 #465"!!!

Submissions end , Sunday, March 24th 2013 at 1:00 ish(NY time) and a winner will be announced.

Here's a RAW File for those who would like one to work with :-

http://d.pr/f/zvzG

Good luck with this POS!

Just had a good play with this. Opened in ACR and reduced exposure then played with blend modes and clarity, vibrance and saturation. I remember smart sharpening at the end.....

"If you screw up something so bad you can't fix it, enhance it and call it a feature."-- Don't remember who said that, but they likely worked for a computer company.
Anyway, created 2 images and combined them. One of just the Lego sign brightened, denoised, and smoothed. For the dragon portion I upped the contrast and saturation, adjusted the tone to be a bit more blue, and darkened in some places on its body that showed some detail.

^^^ lol, yeah. If you can't tell, this one was clearly meant to be a challenge.
I gave you guys a craptastic nightmare to see people's different takes on this "image".

Maybe this one is just too bad......

I like what you guys have done so far.

i normally never remember to submit my entry before the challenge ends...but here's my attempt...

ran the raw thru dynamicphotoHDR to try and get some of the shadow area back...
took a crop of some clouds i shot before, and put them behind...erased the parts i didn't want
added some room to the side of the knight?
tried to denoise it...but it's still noisy as hell...

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

Converted image to jpg (could not get the raw file to open in CS3). Adjusted shadows/ highlights to increase 40% & 60%. Changed to black & white (adjusted red down -60% and yellow up to 166%). Added a sepia photo filter. Added noise.

[QUOTE=MrGman65;157420​58]Converted image to jpg (could not get the raw file to open in CS3). Adjusted shadows/ highlights to increase 40% & 60%. Changed to black & white (adjusted red down -60% and yellow up to 166%). Added a sepia photo filter. Added noise. quote]

If CS3 doesn't support the RAW file, you could Adobe DNG converter which is free from Adobe.

Great entries and participation, everyone! I always enjoy looking at the different editing styles/techniques.

NigelD: I like the hell-like edit... Red-eyed dragon looks angry.

T3heavyshop: Nice edit, changing the subject to just the dragon.
Side note: You are right... there was really no saving this image.

Dredaze: Probably the closest to my final edit (i took a few minutes to edit this, anticipating a mid week post due to zero participation..I was wrong). Nice work. I like the fact that it is no longer in a very distracting legoLand. I would have added noise to the clouds.

DPP: nice work recovering the exposure and hiding the noise with a clarity adjust and b&w conversion.

MrGman65: Nice exposure fix and contrast enhancement.. Processing makes it look much older. Good work.

AND THE WINNER IS...............

Take it away, S.F. Bay.

Well done DreDaze - good work.

Good choice. Tough image to start with, but DreDaze did well with it.

thanks...i didn't even think of adding noise to the sky...i just kept focusing on trying to get rid of it...that's a great idea.

I'll get #465 up tonight

@Nigel. Thanks. I will check it out. I used Canon's DPP (Digital Photo Professional 3.12.4) to convert to a jpg.
@All. Nice job all. Was a challenging one!
G.

MrGman65 wrote in post #15758502
Was a challenging one!

That was the plan. great work.