Before & After #248

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 #249".
This is all about having fun so have at it!!
This round end Monday, Jan 11th at 8:00pm EST

Here's picture I took spur of the moment yesterday and had some fun messing with. Link to full size: http://ocron.zenfolio.​com/img/v1/p55306882.j​pg in case anyone wants to do a different crop.

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

Edited in GIMP.

Healing tool to remove spots (sensor dirt?)
G'MIC Anisotropic Smoothing (default settings) to remove noise
Colors->Auto->Stretch Contrast to bring out sky colors
Colors->Levels, moved middle "pointer" to the right, to deepen the sky colors
Had to Guassian blur the top-left corner to reduce color banding
Unsharp mask Radius 90, Amount .1 for a bit of local contrast
Unsharp mask Radius .8, Amount 1.0, Threshold 10 to offset resizing softness
Resize to 1024 width.
Save as jpg, adjusting quality to fall just under 150KB file size.

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Adjusted levels and contrast in CS3
Opened in Nik EFX 3.0 and added a bi-color filter to it
Ajusted the opacity and blended the filter layer in Nik EFX
Opened in CS3 and adjusted the saturation

Copied red channel and adjusted levels
Selected channel and made a mask over original image
Applied a colored gradient over the image and adjusted opacity
Unnsharpmask and healing brush

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Make a pano, so modified the sky, adjust the contrast a little bit !

2 clicks and 2 filters (from Nik Color Efex Pro)

- weird lines
- pastel

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

Pano kind of effect. Cropped, Duplicated background, changed blend mode to multiply, got rid of dust spots, channels/apply image, add noise and black stroke and flatten.

Processed in CS4 & OnOne - Adjusted Colour, Tone and Density and finally sharpened

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Great job everyone. I thought the different colors looked great and I liked the panos also. This round goes to cccc (with bonus point for getting rid of the sensor dust spots) with eastcoastsponger a very close second.

cccc, you're up.

I will post a new picture tomorrow, thank you for picking me!