Post Processing Challenge June 1 2019

There are no rules as to how you apply your post processing to this image; but, please let us know what you have done so we can all learn.

If you would like to post a candidate image next week, please ensure it is of sufficiently high resolution for manipulation by the participants (3000px on the long side, 300dpi for example).

 

Most of all, let's have fun while we are learning or demonstrating how we use our post-processing software, imaginations and interpretations.

 

Toad in the hole in our back yard.

Punta, your challenge image is rather off the beaten track. Thanks for introducing a lot of variety into this forum.

 

Color Efex has a helpful device called "darken/lighten center." I used this by keying on the center of the toad, followed by a slight color tweak of the green level. Then sharpened with Output Sharpener.

 

LR and NIK for tonal contrast

I’m also thoroughly enjoying the variety of images you’re giving us—many thanks!

 

My idea was similar to Michael’s and Bill’s. I had found that my attention was heading more to the light foreground than to the toad, so I wanted to deemphasize the foreground and put the spotlight on the toad. I wanted the eye on the left to be the center of interest. All edits are in Lightroom.

1. radial filter to reduce exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and blacks away from the toad
   
2. second radial filter to increase the effect farther from the toad (in retrospect, vignetting would have worked for this one, but I hadn’t cropped yet so I didn’t think of it)
   
3. cropped to enlarge and center the toad, and slightly rotated the image
   
4. adjustment brush to increase whites, clarity, saturation, texture, and shadows on the toad and adjacent parts of the burrow, and to reduce highlights there; another brush to further reduce the specular highlights; another to further increase whites, shadows, clarity and saturation on the eye on the left; and several others to selectively lighten and darken parts of the burrow walls. I also darkened a few distractingly light moments on the edge of the frame.
   
5. cloning and healing brushes to remove the hairs near the eye on the left (I wouldn’t ordinarily do that on a photo like this, because the hairs may provide an important clue about who dug the burrow. I’m trying to figure out whether to dial back to the previous Lightroom version because the new one has a slow response time. That tends to be most irksome when cloning, so I wanted to do some detailed cloning to see if I could live with it). I also cloned out a light piece of vegetation at the bottom.
   
6. selectively sharpened the toad and adjacent burrow walls
   

I’m also thoroughly enjoying the variety of images you’re giving us—many thanks!

 

My idea was similar to Michael’s and Bill’s. I had found that my attention was heading more to the light foreground than to the toad, so I wanted to deemphasize the foreground and put the spotlight on the toad. I wanted the eye on the left to be the center of interest. All edits are in Lightroom.

1. radial filter to reduce exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and blacks away from the toad
   
2. second radial filter to increase the effect farther from the toad (in retrospect, vignetting would have worked for this one, but I hadn’t cropped yet so I didn’t think of it)
   
3. cropped to enlarge and center the toad, and slightly rotated the image
   
4. adjustment brush to increase whites, clarity, saturation, texture, and shadows on the toad and adjacent parts of the burrow, and to reduce highlights there; another brush to further reduce the specular highlights; another to further increase whites, shadows, clarity and saturation on the eye on the left; and several others to selectively lighten and darken parts of the burrow walls. I also darkened a few distractingly light moments on the edge of the frame.
   
5. cloning and healing brushes to remove the hairs near the eye on the left (I wouldn’t ordinarily do that on a photo like this, because the hairs may provide an important clue about who dug the burrow. I’m trying to figure out whether to dial back to the previous Lightroom version because the new one has a slow response time. That tends to be most irksome when cloning, so I wanted to do some detailed cloning to see if I could live with it). I also cloned out a light piece of vegetation at the bottom.
   
6. selectively sharpened the toad and adjacent burrow walls
   

[ATTACH=full]1297664[/ATTACH]

I recognize the source of the hair- one of my Corgis: most likely Harry given the texture. He didn't dig the burrow. I think the toad did. This was the first we saw. A second appeared about 15m away.

one of my Corgis

That explains it! Would this be Rhinella fernandezae? And do you post observations on iNaturalist? (Uruguay seems to be underrepresented, and you might enjoy that site)

That explains it! Would this be Rhinella fernandezae? And do you post observations on iNaturalist? (Uruguay seems to be underrepresented, and you might enjoy that site)

Sorry Leslie. I do not know the species.

This is one of those frogs that if you lick 'em, this is what you see. Messing around in 3d Lut Creator and with Photoshop free Flaming Pear plugin Zephyr.

If bugs have nightmares.......this might be one of 'em. Toads in Holes, all with an eye on you.

 

All done in PS except the final vignette in LR

I used the crop tool, content aware turned on, to expand the canvas. Then I used the elliptical selection tool with a good feather to select the toad. I pasted it onto a new layer. I repeated that 4 more times. Each of the new layers were transformed by scale and/or flip horizontal and/or slight rotation. Then, for each of the toad layers I made a Hue/Sat adjustment layer, converted it to clip the layer below, and played with the master or yellow hue, the lightness and saturation.

I had recently taken the shot of the leaf-footed bug on a window, so I cut it from there and pasted it in.

I put a stroke around the whole thing and there you go.

Here's another nightmare. Trying to make an automated GIF file that isn't huge.

PuntaColorada,

You have succeeded in creating an effective trypophobia nightmare with your multiple holes and frogs version! . The kaleidoscope froggies bother me for a whole different reason. When I was a kid after seeing run-over frogs and turtles in the street as I walked to the bus stop, I had this bizarre thought about how it would be to live in a world where everything we wore and built had to be made out of smashed frogs. I tried to convince myself that since it would be the norm, it wouldn't bother me. I was never sure... Haha. Sorry, TMI.

Trying to make an automated GIF file that isn't huge

Wow!

How'd you do that?

Liked the toad just as it was, thought background needed some abstraction

Wow!

How'd you do that?

 

Hi Leslie. There are many ways to make automated GIFs in PS. Here's one tutorial.

How to make an animated GIF in Photoshop

 

I cut the toad, put it on a blank square transparent canvas to occupy 1/4 of the canvas. Then I duplicated the toad into each of the other quarters flipping horizontally and vertically as required which resulted in 4 layers. I merged those 4 layers into one and got rid of the 4 original layers.

 

I copied the merged layer and transformed it to fit the central space between the toads. I did this several times until it was becoming hard to see detail. Then I went to each layer except the first and rotated tit by 90˚. Under all these layers, I put in a solid colour adjustment layer to fill in any underlying empty spots. I chose the colour to be that of one of the darker greens of the toad.

 

I made sure the timeline window was visible and then chose create timeline animation which put each layer on a separate timeline. I changed the frame rate from 30fps to 10fps and stretched all the timelines to 5seconds. I made the animation loop continuously.

 

I put a fade in and fade out transition at the beginning and end of all but the solid colour timeline. Then I right clicked on each timeline and set an animation as zoom in and rotate clock or counter clockwise on alternate timelines.

 

I went to export for web (legacy), set the canvas size to 500px by 500px and 32 colours, no dithering and exported it to a GIF. It still ended up being 6MP, but when you think of it, 10 fps by 5sec results in 50 frames, or 50 images contained in the GIF.

 

It would have been more efficient to export the animation as an MPEG movie; but, you can't post them on these forums.

Here's one tutorial

Many thanks for the explanation, and I love the result! Now, off I go to start playing...