Before & After #218

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 #219".

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

Contest ends 6PM EST on Monday the 14th.

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CS2 : Color, Contrast, Levels,
Background layer - Gamma/Exposure, Saturation Sponge, Burn
Subject layer - Levels, Burn, Saturation Sponge, Sharpen
Vignette layer

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I've been following these competitions for awhile so I decided to start playin. Hopefully that is ok.


Edited in Lightroom2


Crop
B/W Conversion
Adjustment Brush on exposure to darken background
Adjustment Brush to sharpen bird
Small vignette

welcome to the game stephensphoto!

Gimp:
Curves - adjusted white and black points, slight colour correction
Combination of burning and cloning/healing to get rid of vertical lines (reflection?)
Increased saturation + contrast
Sharpened
Vignette

This explanation could get a little lengthy...all edits made in photoshop CS4
1. Lowered curves (output 78, input 168) and then channel masked with blue channel to bring the blown out highlights back down to exposure in the whits of the chest and legs.

2. I then used curves again (output 53, input 68 for lower and output 182, input 163 for upper) to give the ripples in the water a little more "punch". This was layer masked to just the water and it stopped just below the weeds. The bird was masked out from this adjustment as well.

3. Next was a color balance with shadows all -3, midtones +3 and highlights +3. This layer was set to luminosity and preserve lumination was not checked.

4. Next was a slight curves layer (output 62, input 66 for lower point, ouput 197, input 191 for upper point)

5. I then added a vignette using curves (output 113, input 141) then using my brush tool to paint over the bird, some background, and the water. Then added a gausian blur to the mask. The blur was set to 250 maxing the slider out.

6. Next I added a highpass filter at 0.6 and painted over just the bird and the reflection in the water.

7. Next I added a gaussian blur at 1.2 and used the inverted mask from the highpass. This will blur everything except what was sharpened, so it blurs the background slightly.

8. The last step was cropping a little bit from the left edge to place the bird not so centered. I like to have a little more room in front of the subject.

Also, if anyone wants the PS file, I'll save it until this contest ends.

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-Nik Vivera to added contrast and saturation to the brown and black colors in the shot.
- Bleach bypass filter for more contrast to the whole image.
- Merge both images and duplicated
- Cross processing filter B02 at 80% strength. Then lowered the opacity to remove the orange hue that was in the image.
- Darkened the black because the cross processing filter added a blue hue to them.
- Cropped

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This was fun, simply because I got a chance to mess around with some colors, copying and pasting, multiple layers,and trying to get the light sources to match up (which IMHO really didn't work out that well). The coffee cup came from a GIS, so it's not mine.

The reflection (bird's legs) turned ok better than I though it would.

Cheers

Holy smokes! Awesome entries everybody -- will post up the winner in a few.

Flo -- Nice dreamy mood Gail, I like the crop alot as well.

Lore -- Pretty much spot on with the colors/detal here Lore great job!

stephensphoto -- really nice B&W and the crop works well.

spitfire -- I love the Gimp it's a great tool and I still use it often, pretty good edit and great job getting rid of the OOF grass in front of the bird. It's a little oversaturated for my taste.

newb2pro -- excellent job, crop works well, the tri-colored heron looks pretty good - I do think you brought the whites down a bit too much but it's still very good.

BitterSweet -- nice job Tracey with the crop and the cross-processing - well done.

Kendoway -- man you coffee'd my bird I love your edits Chris they are always outside the box. You did a great job on the reflection and the copy/paste operation!

chrisa -- nice job chrisa - colors are pretty good and the detail is nice but maybe too sharp.

Well I'm pretty much torn between Lore's and newb2pro's edits with stephensphoto trying to edge in there!

I'm going to give the win to newb2pro - Congrats.


Great job everybody and I thank you all for giving this a go!

wow, I'm really surprised at that. I just recalibrated my monitor and I don't like my edit at all, haha. but hey, that's life. It was a great shot, and I thought I did a great job...until I calibrated. GET YOUR MONITOR CALIBRATED PEOPLE!!!

The new challenge is here
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=752834

Well done newb2ro.

This was my other take on the photo, mostly to see if I could generate a decent-looking reflection, rather than as a serious entry. This was done using GIMP's distort feature.