Before and After 472

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 #473".

Submissions end, Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013 at 8:00 PM BST and a winner will be announced.

Good Luck and have fun!

Here's the RAW File for those who would like one to work with.

https://www.dropbox.co​m …e6mcpvilh08t/_M​G_1350.CR2

Adjusted lighting, reduced noise, removed foreground distractions.

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Adjusted lighting, reduced noise, removed foreground distractions.

LR: Reduced contrast quite a bit. hightlights -50, shadows +50, whites -50, blacks +50. split tone to add a little blue to the highs and lows. reduced blue luminance. turquoise sky resulted from increasing warmth.

Method: LR3. Crop to panorama to suit composition. Use brush and gradient to change brightness, sharpness, etc in select areas. Slight tweaks to black, recovery, and graph. NR with high color and low detail - zoomed in to so enough noise removed without aberrations or over-smoothing. Allowed Smugmug to do default sharpening etc. Note: Original has lots of noise and color aberrations.

Convert to .dng file. Open dng file. Adj exposure +.30, Adj fill light +50. Open image file, add filter Distort-Glass-Ocean ripple. Crop. Adj shadows +15.

Some excellent work this week folks - thanks! Sort of makes my life difficult judging but here we go :-

yb98 - great colour and balance - the water and sky especially good.

M_Six - I liked the distraction removal, wasn't expecting that so well done. The colours are good too.

Fuhrtographer - Good distraction removal too but I don't like the colour balance I'm afraid.

T3 Heavy Shop - Almost a painterly feel to this just a little too turquoise in its effect.

NBEast - I've judged your first edit - The letter box crop wasn't what I had in mind and I don't think it suits it very well although I like the amount of noise reduction. The original was taken at around 5 in the morning and the lights on the ships proved quite challenging as you found.

Dawicka2 - Like your edit, it has an antiquish kind of feel to it. The vignette works really well.

MrGman65 - Good colours behind the painting and the effect suits the composition I think.

I liked both yb98 and M_Six but the sky and water in yb98's version just has the edge so it's over to you for #473.

Thanks everyone - great work.

Thank Nigel and good work everyone.
BTW sorry I haven't posted comments on how I did the conversion...I used same method as usual : different conversions with DPP to get as best colors and exposure as possible in different parts of the pic and then blend all the conversions together with DPP++.

#473 is ready.
Before & After #473

Kudos, yb98.

Interesting before and after. I actually like both before and after. Both has its own style and look.

Nice work everyone, especially Yb98!