Post Processing Challenge May 16, 2020

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.

 

This statue is found at the waterfront along the rambla in Piriápolis Uruguay. The intent is good, but the execution? IMHO, it is a frightening and ugly thing.

 

What help can you offer this poor image of an ugly statue?

 

Hi, Punta I think you are being a bit harsh on this charming fellow. Only a few adjustments made mainly to exposure, crop and removal of the lamp posts. Adjustments done in a combination of Lightroom and PSE.

I combined the photo with one of water and gulls so that the man is walking through a flooded area next to the ocean. Did some cloning and used Topaz Simplify with painting settings, then used NIK colorEfex in Photoshop for final adjustments. A fun image to play with!

From what I've been able to dig up on the internet, this statue on the rambla in Piriápolis, Uruguay was erected in 1990 to acknowledge and commemorate the ''Armenian Holocaust': the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman governments between 1914 and 1923. Other countries have acknowledged the genocide at different times and in different ways. I didn't want to trivialize or disrespect the meaning of the statue. But I thought it perhaps deserved a more 'heroic 'setting' (think Copenhagen's 'Little Mermaid'). I'm not sure that this setting is the best one but it's what I came up with quickly:

- background (sea) is freely available from pexels.com; I made a small donation to the photographer just to say thanks

- cropped the photo (square) to match the background

- tweaked the saturation and brightness of the background and the exposure/contrast of the statue and - separately - its base

- added a yellow 'wash' to blend colors a bit more

Adjusted exposure & shadows in LR. Converted to b/w & added tonal contrast in NIK

 

Like Mike, the first thing I did was research the statue to figure out who it was commemorating, and I too decided that the treatment required a measure of gravitas. I opted for the heroic-figure-battling-great-odds approach.

 

The preliminaries:

1. In Lightroom: I exposed the first copy for the figure, and lightened the blues and greens to make the figure easier to select in Photoshop. I also reduced contrast a lot in the figure so I wouldn’t need to deal with a strong directional light source, since I knew that faking shadows was going to be a problem.
   
2. In Photoshop: I selected the sky, loaded it into a layer mask, and inverted the selection to capture the figure. I tidied up the edges with a brush. This gave me a file with just the figure.
   
3. In Lightroom: I exposed a new copy for the sky and reduced clarity there to make it easier to clone clouds.
   
4. In Photoshop: I cloned in sky over the figure and structure; this gave me a second file with just sky.
   
5. I found one of my dune photos that had ambiguous lighting, and put that into Photoshop, where I cloned out a big foreground tree shadow.
   
6. I remembered that Gerald had a challenge photo a couple of years ago that included marooned boats, so I popped that into Photoshop and borrowed a boat. That gave me the four files I needed.
   

In Photoshop:

1. I combined the four files into four layers in a single new file, and enlarged the canvas to allow more sky. I sized and positioned each of the layers into a composition I liked.
   
2. I added a layer mask to the borrowed boat and masked out the original background.
   
3. The figure and the boat were a bit too stark, so I dialed back the opacity on each of their layers by about 15%, which made them meld a bit with the background without their transparency being noticeable.
   

In Lightroom:

1. I used an adjustment brush to add shadows for the boat and figure.
   
2. Now the hardest part: I faked the footprints with an adjustment brush. I don’t think I did a very good job with them, and this was my second try. All I can say is that it’s a lot better than the first try was.
   

Thanks for the photo, Punta Colorada! I call this one the Avenging Armenian Angel. Wings courtesy of Infinite Texture Panel with lots of adjustments in PS with color, layers and blend-ifs. Edited May 17, 2020 by tom_r

Wow, this forum rocks! The responses to this thread are amazing and - for me - truly inspiring! Yes, they're all very creative and talented applications of PP. What I find most inspiring is how different people have had different (but equally creative and inspired) ' personal visions' for their images and used PP to make these happen. Special thanks to @Leslie Reid for the detailed explanation!

 

My take-away: great PP is initially more about 'envisioning' than about technique. If you have a 'clear vision' in mind, you can probably figure out or learn the techniques to create it. Or at least to come close. Many thanks to @PuntaColorada for providing us with such an inspiring photo!

 

Mike

Edited May 17, 2020 by mikemorrell

Punta, you have the knack of posting images that indeed inspire us to utilize our skill, artistry - and sometimes, fantasy. This one is no exception.

 

First, in PSE15, I cropped the image to square format and then converted it to b&w using Silver Efex. Then, in PSE, I inverted the image and then solarized it. My last steps in PSE were selective sharpening and dodging.

 

 

 

!. Using Photoshop CS6, I selected the statue from the original imaged.

2. I searched the web for a suitable picture to add to, and pasted in after adjusting the sizes to fit.

3. I spend some time adjusting the color of the image I pasted in to try and match the colors of the 2 statues.