Before & After #238

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 #239".
This is all about having fun so have at it!!
This round ends Thursday, December 3rd at 6pm eastern time.

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Well, I wanted to try out some new sharpening methods so this image was as good as any to practice on

1. Curves to brighten shadows a little bit, masked for bird only
2. Saturation/Lightness, masked for non-bird
3. Sharpened eye area
4. Sharpened breast area and legs

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This is the "sharpening" tool I was testing:

http://www.focusmagic.​com/download.htm

Tried another test with slightly different sharpening settings. I don't think I will bother with the plugin... I could probably do better with USM

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- cropped and resized by 60px on the vertical
- cloned out metal thing on the stump
- shadows/highlights - shadows slider ~10, highlights ~4
- lightened birds face further with a curves adj layer and mask
- contrast adj layer and mask to make the head/beak/bug stand out more
- noise ninja pass to blur the backround and sharpen the bird
- small saturation bump on eyes and beak to try to add some color there
- border

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

For an edit like this I really wish I had a larger original to work with.

I cropped it, 0 saturation, upped contrast and brightness slightly, and re-colored the slug, and cloned out a little bit of what was hanging from the slug.

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GIMP:
Dodge on everything bar a few bits of the bird, which got burned (tasty)
Increased contrast a tad

1) Levels and curves adjustment (small).
2) Selected bird, placed on separate layer, likewise for far background.
3) "Lens blur" to the far background, and increased saturation.
4) Lightened up the shadow a little bit.
5) USM in two passes: 10%, 100 pix then 66%, 0.5 pix.
6) Cropped to try to get closer to "thirds".

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Here's my go at it... First brought it into PS via Open as and used some Camera Raw tweaks to it... then used a levels and Hue/sat adjustment layers with masks to tweak some areas... Added border.

Nice going folks -- You all did great on this terrible image!

I'm handing this one over to Ocron -- Nice edit - you handled the color casts very well and controlled the halos!

All were much better than I expected -- Thanks for taking the time to show us your edits!

Nice going Ocron!

Very nice Ocron... I like your edit a lot

Well done Ocron, nice edit.

Thanks! I'll get 239 up this morning.