Dave Hill Effect #4

A fun little game to help us develop our processing skills while we pursue the ever popular and trendy "Dave Hill Look".

To learn more about Dave, you can visit his site at http://www.davehillpho​to.com/.

Some may ask, "What is the Dave Hill Look." Well, it may be best defined as gritty, hyper sharp, little if any bokeh, and very high contrast. Dave Hill's work relies a great deal on his lighting techniques, which may not be duplicated effectively in the target photos that appear in the contests.

So do your best with what you have.

Here are the rules (the bulk of which are borrowed from the before/after threads, with appreciation.)

Here's the breakdown of the game. I will post a picture that I choose, 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 "Dave Hill Effect #5".

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

THIS CONTEST WILL END AT 6 PM, Monday, September 1st!!!

(PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO POST YOUR EDIT STEPS THAT YOU TOOK TO ACHIEVE THIS LOOK)

Here is a picture I took hoping to do the Dave Hill Effect, but never really got to it.

Please download the larger file work from if you like: Here

great photo.


I wanted to make a comment though...I've found that trying to edit the photos as extensively as this technique requires and because of the size limitations (1024xwhatever & less than 150kb) I'm getting tons of artifacting. Anyone else having this trouble?

anyway here's my effort

duplicate layer
used Topaz filter (crisp)
masked out artifacts
flattened
duplicate layer
used Topaz filter (portrait)
masked out artifacts
flattened
nik color efex pro contrast filter
flattened
duplicate layer
another duplicate layer, convert to B&W change to "multiply" and merge down to previous duplicate
change opacity to 25% and hard light
flatten & save for web

LucisArt Exposure 40%\#6 setting
ReDynaMix HDR: Dramatic Radius 6.0, strength 0.60, smoothness 0.3,vivid colors 0.1,brightness 10.
B\W Styler plugin; selective color\sat. mask #1, Mist 1 (this brightened that background up cleanly),
Neat image to smooth out some: default settings worked fine so I went with it .
This took about 5min. tops.
Just saw there was a larger file to use , bummer.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Permagrin wrote in post #6210348
great photo.

I wanted to make a comment though...I've found that trying to edit the photos as extensively as this technique requires and because of the size limitations (1024xwhatever & less than 150kb) I'm getting tons of artifacting. Anyone else having this trouble?

I know of this as you will need to edit in many iterations, and the inherent artifacts will surface, thats why I attached the larger size for you guys, it should help in keeping the artifacting to a minimum.

Quick edit.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

aaand...the winner is -- permagrin! looks the most natural yet davehill-esque!

So I'm a little behind.. but thought I'd give it a shot!

I know that I am also late... but here is mine...

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