Another great round everyone, and thanks for the stellar contributions! Nice to see such a wide variety of entries, from humorous, to creative, to disciplined– and that’s what makes these Before and After contests so much fun.
Ok, on to the judging – in the same order they appeared:
Douglas – A very nice job with this indeed, and I really like the circular white mask, and then the ears on top. It gives it a sort of “Out Of Bounds” feel to the entry (check the OOB competition if you haven’t seen it – which is a little dusty at the moment). I like the colorization of the eyes, but something about that orange nose seems just a tad off. Otherwise, I love it.
Spidy (Debi) – You get better and better with every competition, and have become a force to be reckoned with. The moment I saw this, I had a LOL, which is exactly the emotion that you were trying to evoke (I hope). Nice job with the liquefy tool (which I never touch – too powerful for me), and you got the eyes right on the money. A few black spots on those left whiskers, but hair is almost impossible to lasso/magic wand. Love the funny text, “Mr. Happy” indeed.
Flo – Excellent, and I love this. Many, many people are afraid to crop (that’s me! waves hand), and most people are really terrified to create “negative space” in an image by replacing it with a neutral/null – so that only a smaller portion of the photograph is revealed. Sorry if I sound like an art critic, but this was akin to doing a selective color re-touch, but pushing it even farther and harder. This is the kind of edit I would expect to see from a professional, and that’s you. You lost a little sharpness around the eyes and nose, but it’s negligible.
Lore – I always look forward to your edits because they are sensible and dependable almost every single time (though I’ve seen you go crazy – and I like that too). I like the crop here, and you’ve created a nice rule of thirds out of my dead center photograph. The viewer is drawn immediately to the eyes, and that’s what I like to see. As Debi did before, excellent job stamping out the clutter in the background.
Jason – Great attempt at pulling off a funny one, and it did make me laugh! A Photoshop of this style is still well beyond my capabilities, so I regularly try to learn from Dozer, our resident PS expert. If you’ve not see the “Photoshop Tricky Pictures” thread or the “Show your Multiple Personality shots” thread, go look at some of his work. You’ve almost got the mouth right, though you need some better overlap on that upper lip, so that it obscures the leg properly. And lastly the color balance and lighting between the cat and the person objects need some tweaks to fully suspend our disbelief.. An excellent Photoshop otherwise.
Monty – Ah Monty, this one rocks. Almost 100% perfect, and I know how hard it is to find an object that matches the perspective of the recipient object. The mouth and tongue are lined up almost bang on, but still off maybe 5 % - and I would have smudged or blurred the lip on the upper left hand side. Maybe made the tongue a bit pinker? Remove that tiny red spot on the upper lip? Ok, I’ve got out to the Nit Plantation to do some harvesting, because I really can’t find anything wrong with. It’s a d**n fine Photoshop, par excellence indeed!
Colin – You win the prize for the most “expressive entry”. The sad face is perfect, and I can’t really figure how you did that with the eyes. The dog layer in back needs some clean up work around the edges, and you’ve got the dog a little too sharp back there for an object that should be blurry based on the original DOF. I might have been tempted to simply hit that with some lens blur. Again, I love the “sad cat” expression – great work on that.
Again great work everyone – and you all should be proud of your entries!
3rd Place Goes to Debi: The eyes, color adjustments, and text are great,. Nice work!
2nd Place Goes to Monty: Again, an excellent, creative, and detailed Photoshop.
And the Winner is...!
Congrats Flo – awesome work. By the way, that Title Fairy thread is deadly – I got smacked yesterday
