Before and After #177

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 72hrs 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 #178".

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

This round will end Saturday April 18th at 05:30AM EST

Here is an early era house I saw at Fort Griswold in Groton, CT.

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LR2 - Crop, B&W, Heavy Contrast, +100 Recovery, +73 Fill Light, +10 Blacks, +21 Brightness, +100 Clarity, +Vibrance-Saturation, Curves, Hue/Saturation, NR, vingette - CS2, paintbrush, lowered flow & opacity played around, dont know what I was going for... kept going until... well until I decided I was done... LOL.

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Slight angle adjustment in Lightroom. Adjusted contrast +31, Recovery 23, Blacks 2, Brightness +10, Vibrance +25. In Photoshop: added grass to yellow spots using clone stamp and/or healing brush set to proximity match. Added clouds by selecting sky with magic wand(click contiguous/set tolerance to 22), creating a new layer from selection, chose filter/render/clouds, set blend mode to screen. Then add a layer mask by choosing layer/layer mask/reveal all. Then used a black brush to paint over areas where I didn't want clouds. Then set layer's opacity to 31% or so.

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Since I changed the color on the last one I thought I'd continue with the theme.
Changed colors with two adjustment layer masks, one hue/saturation and the other a selective color. Also added the new sky with some clouds on a separate layer and blended with a gradient mask and low opacity erasures.

Here is my intake for this one:

Alot of burning tool use,
normal brush for the cloud and the lightning,
tilting the bench in the garden,
blackening the door,
removing a part of the roof and the chimney with the rubber stamp tool,
grayscale,
brightness contrast adjustments,
Shadow highlight adjustments,
Added noise.

In CS4, duplicated background layer with multiply blend mode, 50% opacity. Spot healing to fix the grass. Used dodge tool to lighten the front door. Healing tool to remove the two power lines on the right side of the house. Selected roof, new layer and painted it green at 80% opacity, selected the brick chimney to a new layer and gave it a little more red tone. Selected the sky - copied a new layer and then copied a cloudy sky from another jpg at 74% fill to match better. Added Bevel & Emboss edge - innner bevel contoured smooth. Stroke at 174 pixels.

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My first edit contest.

Upped contrast on everything, copied house out of image. Desaturated the image, pasted house back in. Had to desaturate each window also, because they all had a blue reflections. Blurred some small bright white objects out, brushed over the antenna. Made the white building on the left a bit darker, added a bit more color to the chimney. Small window to the left of the door didn't look right, so I blurred the lines around it to make it a bit more normal.

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-Slight straighten.

-Created a polarizing filter effect on the sky using a black gradient over a new level and adjusting opacity.

-Slight use of clone stamp on grass.

-Selective saturation of grass and building. ( each selected seperately and adjusted on a new layer)

-Sharpened (USM 200% at 0.3)

- Duplicate, desaturate, duplicate, invert, color dodge, gaussian blur to create "sketch" layer (tutorial on how: http://www.photoshopsu​pport.com …ifer/photo-to-sketch.html)
- Duplicate original to create color layer.
- Blend "sketch" layer with color layer. I used the sliders on the bottom to take out the white and smooth to the black (should've just used color burn, oops).
- Chop up the color layer and alter colors individually (hue and saturation). Blur the grass and the trees.
- Cut sky to new layer. Hue to pink. Gradient overlay from black to transparent on Dissolve mode at low opacity (~40%). Merge style then tiny horizontal motion blur to give it sketch effect. Overlay entire layer again with very low opacity (~15%) gradient from blue to transparent.
- Altered colors some more on advice of a painter.

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I thought this might look decent in a dusk-type setting with some light fog in the trees where the elevation is a tad lower. I started with a mignight filter, then used a reversed-graduated-ND filter, selectively added a touch of fog, threw in a skylight filter and some gentle vignetting for mood. I think it feels sort of Sleepy-Hollow-ish.

I decided that the house was not big enough, and I thought it would look better at night

To extend the house, I copied sections of house and overlayed them with new layers and used eraser to blend. Needed A little clone action, too.

Then I added a couple layers, one with a shadows/highlight tweak, and another a hard light overlay. Adjusted opacity and flattened. Cropped and extended canvas. Used smudge to fill the extra canvas with sky. Pasted a full moon in from one of my own pictures. Eraser to blend. brightness, contrast and levels to adjust lighting to look like after dark.

Fun edit! I think I may have gone overboard, though.

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started in lightroom 2- crop/straighten, kicked up vibrance and clarity(big time), took saturation to -24, hue shifted(green red orange magenta), saturation shifted(all), luminace shift(orange, red)

moved to CS4- cloned out the antenna, cloned in two additional windows..repaired color in bottom right window

back to lightroom- final crop, vignette.

I didnt add any grass I decided I liked it yellow and bare

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As always, you are all so kind to put up with my weekly nonsense. I really like to challenge myself to something new, so for some odd reason I started out with this as simple edit, and it slowly bloomed into a monster. At first I was going for a haunted house (v1.0 had gargoyles and lighting), and then it started to evolve into the Bates Motel (I have no idea why), and from there it grew into a vintage movie poster homage. I had a blast doing this!

• Cropped
  
• Straightened
  
• Cropped again
  
• Canvas increased
  
• Much of the background removed.
  
• Sky removed
  
• Bench removed (clones and copies)
  
• Bushes removed (clones and copies)
  
• Picket fence increased (clones and copies)
  
• Center 2nd story window made as the others (copy + paste)
  
• 2nd story added (heavy copy and paste)
  
• Windows moved up.
  
• 2nd Chimney added - moved, blended, smudged
  
• House trim moved, shadow added manually (center)
  
• New house moved into position and pasted.
  
• Levels.
  
• Curves
  
• Saturation (+18%)
  
• Brightness + Contrast
  
• Channel Mixer - monochrome + red
  
• Fence burned.
  
• Bates motel sign added - levels + curves, rotate, scale
  
• Janet Leigh added (separate download - shower scene) - scaled - burned, opacity set 25%
  
• Vintage Hitchcock movie poster (re-release of the film) downloaded, cropped, cut - paper wrinkles removed - changed saturations, removed artifacts.
  
• Anthony Perkins touched up with some un-sharp mask.
  
• Credits moved pasted below.
  
• Audience warning re-cropped, saturated, pasted.
  
• New blurb text added (poster was too shabby for a cut + paste). Outer glow.
  
• Frame from a 2nd Psycho poster added as a background layer and cropped.
  

crop and straightened
Converted to b\w with BW Styler and added a copper tint
Created another layer and used various brushes for the washed out effect /flattened
Opened up in LucisArt and used plad #3 at 40% w\3rd button

I still didn't like it so I used a new brush, script_brush by ladyVictoire to add the writing.