Before & After #88

This game is to help those of us who are trying to learn new tricks when it comes to editing.

Here's the breakdown of the game. I will post a picture that I choose, resized to exactly 1024 pixels maximum on the long side. Outside of being resized it has to be unedited...meaning no adjustments to any levels, it has to look like it did as it came out of the camera.

The game will last 48hrs 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.

Also, please keep all comments, be they positive or negative, to yourself until after the game has ended.

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 and After #89".

This is all about having fun so have at it!!!

This game will end on Wednesday, July 30th at 10:00 pm (Mountain).

Here's a dull one for you guys to jazz up somehow. Good luck!

As soon as I saw this I knew what I wanted to do with it.
I first added the woman
softened her skin
made the colors more vivid
added noise
added a frame & border

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

lowered the brightness
lowered the contrast
upped the saturation
sharpened
applied NR
added background
skewed and rotated a bit

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

removed butterfly from background used kaleidoscope plugin
re-used butterfly deleted all color but some black
replaced color with stone background from original image
added a bit up drop shadow to butterfly

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Something a little different


- Removed background from Butterfly
- Placed Butterfly on back of lady
- Used the Warp tool on Butterfly to try and match contour of ladies back
- De-saturated Butterfly slightly and decreased contrast some
- Used burn tool to help with Butterflies contour
- Decreased opacity of the Butterfly layer very slightly (90%)
- Added text
- Border

I decided on a stained glass butterfly
I layered the butterfly from the background
Used the stained glass texture and then a photo filter to adjust color for each layer.
Applied a blur to the background

Ok, this was one of my ideas that sounded less complicated and tons easier to do in my head...

*I started by creating a color palette from the butterfly
*Then I traced every line on the butterfly using vector objects (w/ pen tool) and applied the correct color... (not sure I'll ever touch the pen tool again!)
--the 83 vectors all had stroke black 1px layer effect
*Increased contrast
*Removed the background (channels worked almost perfectly here)
*New background created using render clouds (color ended up not important here)
*Used Alien Skin Exposure to easily (sliders!) tweak the contrast as needed
*Used Tifen dfx X-Ray on background to finalize the contrast
*Flaming Pear's Twist plugin, on lighten
*Curves adjustment to fix contrast issues the plugin caused
*Hue/Saturation adjustment to change background to pink
*Added my vectored butterfly to the background
*Flaming Pear's flood plugin
*Nik Bleach Bypass, luminosity
*Redfield Fractalius plugin on wide crayon (altered moderately)
*Render lighting effects from above, but masked off the water
*Nik reflector effects from below

So.. the original is in there somewhere?

I should have written this down as I was creating it Let's see what I remember...
Fired up the bong...:p
Straightened and cropped.
Extended the canvas.
Nik Color Effex Pro (Monday Morning- Blue)
Eyes, lips and nose belong to family members...
Cloned in eyes and blended
Cloned in lips and nose
Added inverted rose to top and blended it in.
Added Moon on left hand corner. Blended it in
Added second butterfly to "Cheek" Faded the clone
USM 60%
Noise Ninja'ed
Added funky border
Collapsed in exhaustion...

two days, who won?

CameraMan741 wrote in post #6017426
two days, who won?

Man, the challenge has only been closed for fifteen minutes and I'm getting high pressured!

Everyone's edits were very creative. I always love seeing so many completely different visions. Thanks everyone for playing!

I've got to give this one to SonofDarwin. Justin...just - wow! Even without the background (which to be honest, at first glance made me think the butterfly was inside someone's left ventricle :lol the job you did on the butterfly and reflection was very cool! Vivid colors, smooth textures. Love it.

Side notes: Lee - nice work on the tattoo. Very realistic! I have never used the warp tool - I had to look it up!
Luckystar - great job...i have to ask - where did the woman come from? I couldn't decide if I thought it was a ps'd photo or if you drew it.
Dilorenzo - Self-medicating were ya? Very off the wall edit - but I am going to borrow your idea and make a mask out of the butterfly to use on a picture of my girls. Great job!
SRABeemer-cool idea. It gives off a little bit of a 3-D effect.
Cameraman741-good idea to get rid of the concrete background altogether. The blues and yellows go nicely.
Bootless- love the design the kaleidoscope effect created. I think I would've liked to have seen the original butterfly kept, though, instead of the concrete - but very imaginative!

Thanks again everyone!

SonofDarwin! You're up!

suzyb wrote in post #6017584
I've got to give this one to SonofDarwin. Justin...just - wow! Even without the background (which to be honest, at first glance made me think the butterfly was inside someone's left ventricle :lol the job you did on the butterfly and reflection was very cool! Vivid colors, smooth textures. Love it.

Haha, I never even thought about the background color, but you're right! That's a little creepy After I finished I decided I liked my original color scheme better with cyan, but it would have been too hard to change at that point. Attached is what it looked like just after I finished the butterfly. It was a bit too smooth for me at that point. Anyway, just something new I wanted to try after I watched a Vector Portrait tutorial last week. I'd like to have done a vector background but I didn't think I'd have time to finish after realizing how long it took.

I've all my photo equipment packed for a move, so give me a few to go through some older collections.

Good job everyone. Wonderful edits given the simplicity of the original! I love it

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Congratulations Justin!

Justin -
Love how yours looks like it could be a stained glass window (minus the reflection).
great job everyone

Justin - Absolutely perfect. I have no idea how you did that, but it has given me some wonderful ideas. You guys are insanely talented and your skills are amazing!!!

loved the edits on this one...they were all so creative & I didn't envy Suzy one bit in having to choose!

Congrats Justin