Before and After - The Weekly Editing Challenge

Started with results of the Mantiuk06 operator from Luminance HDR, which gave the snow some local contrast, and masked in a RawTherapee conversion of just the bird in GIMP.

Northern Cardinal

My version: heavy crop, multiple adjustments done in PS to offset the bird. Copied and pasted the wooden rail to extend it, flipped horizontally etc.

Crop, replace background, tweak colors and contrast to taste.

Cropped, brushed in some +exp on the bird. Levels adjusted and slight vignette added.

My contribution, nothing really special, some sharpening and white balance tweaking... "Birds Just Wanna Have Fun" is my title.

Any news on who the winner is?

For reasons I don't understand, MQ is not including a thumbnail of the photo in the quoted post.

Anyway, all the edits were quite good. Ultimately, it boiled down to Renata's version and TeemSpeed's. I think the bird came out nicer in Renata's but how can you not love the little birdie snowman!

TeamSpeed takes this week's challenge!

Great, thank you! Here is a sample, horizon is messed up, hazy, color is off, let's see what can be done! Exposure seems pretty good, but the image overall is lackluster.
-------

Before and After - The Weekly Editing Challenge
...now compiled into a single, easy to locate thread, that can be added to your subscribe/follow list!

Rules are simple:

• Download the image file from the current week
  
• Contestants will have 7 days to edit the image and post their edited version to the thread (1 entry per week)
  
• The owner of the original image will choose a winner
  
• The winner will copy & paste this post and include a new downloadable image link

  The new image must be unedited / SOOC (straight our of camera), full-resolution, and in a RAW format, ie. CR2, DNG, TIF, etc (Dropbox works well for uploading and linking these large files)

Congratulations, TeamSpeed!

Edit in LR with crop

Nice!

I am hoping somebody has a way to deal with the haze too in the distance. I tried a few things and never got a look I liked.

Well, I had a go as well but i have to admit: it is a tough one. I straightened the horizon, cropped, enhanced the luminosity, sharpened by using high pass twice, used a few different blending modes and added a bunch of different adjustment layers. Not particularly happy with the results but I couldn't spend much time editing. I have a bunch of commission paintings ion my easel and my customers are anxiously waiting

Cropped, added sky and motion blur.