Before and After #146

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 & After #147".

This is all about having fun so have at it!!!
Any edit, over-the-top creative or subtle, is encouraged!

This game will end on Tuesday, December 30th at 5:00pm EST

Sunday school outing to the zoo.

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Levels, added vignet, lab color->grayscale, grayscale->duotone and played around with it to get a sepia like look,filter->Texture->grain.

Did a lot of undo's/redo's so I can't be to specific on the above steps but that was the basic workflow.

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I decided to go with an over-processed look on this one and focus on the girl's beautiful face. Obviously, I desaturated the enite image, then did some skin smoothing and noise reduction on her face. I also did some highlight dodging on her face. I then started playing with the shadow/highlight tool quite a bit, selecting different areas to adjust the way I wanted. I played around with the brightness/contrast tool, and unsharp mask. I also used the cloning tool to get rid of the haloing that occurred as a result of shadow/highlight work. Finally, I darkened the background, cropped and added the border. I probably did some other things as well, I just can't remember, as I did this over a couple of days, just spending a few minutes here and there messing around with it.

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Her smile and expression seems so dreamy, that I decided to go with a Desat-Resat approach.

1. Applied Gradient Blur emanating from face @ 1%;1%;1%;2%
2. Copied layer and applied heavy desaturation
3. Used original layer w/ layer mask to resaturate portions using 15% opacity
4. Copied original layer and changed to B/W
5. Cut out middle of B/W layer with rectangular marquee set at 25 pixel feather to create B/W vignette
6. Applied scratches effect @ 40% opacity.
7. Lightly erased some scratches from face area
8. Softened entire image via GB @ 1 pixel

Adorable child...

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

Some very nice edits here! Yup, this girl is so sweet!

Monty ~ loved what you did with it, I like the heavy vignette/burnt effect a lot.
azsteve ~ You did a great job with the girl's top! But oh... the dreaded child skin-smoothing...
Silver ~ I like how you combined the soft image with a scratched surface, very nice. The low saturation is also good.
Flo ~ beautiful, clear, sharp, great color use - LOVE it!

Go Flo!

Yay Gail!! Good job and nice to see you back in the game (must be that cabin fever setting in )

Very nice Gail !! Congrats!! I loved it as soon as I saw it.

Look forward to the next one.

Wow, thanks! I didn't know until Monty told me.....

getting one up now