Post Processing Challenge May 23, 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.

A note to this Corgi: you aren't likely to win 'Best in Show' if you stick your tongue out at the judge.

I'm a very occasional and still very amateur video-editor. But (as with most PP tools) I'm trying to learn little by little more than than the very basics. I've been playing about with videos over the past few days so I thought I'd do a PP of this as a .gif. Easier said than done!

I have an all-singing, all-dancing video-editing program (Cyberlink Power Director) that does everything I could wish for (and much more!). It can produce videos in pretty much any format ...except .gif files. So, the best advice I could find was to import an AVI/MP4 video (produced by Power director!) into Photoshop where each ''video frame' becomes a separate layer . That didn't really work because there were far too far (mostly meaningless) video frames/layers. The video suggestion that someone would manually review and delete 'redundant' layers (= video frames) was absurd.

So I went back to basics. I my 5 .images from Photoshop back into a Photoshop 'timeline'; Adjusted the display times and exported this.gif file..The Photoshop title layer somehow didn't work. The result is no great shakes. You'll get the idea. What most surprised me was that all-singing all-dancing video editing/production software coud produce everything else besides .gif. And Photoshop that has some primitive video-editing facilities is still the 'go to'place for gifs!

<ike

That's just evil, Mike. I once held a Corgi puppy for a little while and I was hooked, line and sinker! Instant puppy love!

Well, Mike's gif may not be too far off the mark.

Here's our 2 corgis, Hattie and Harry, 'playing'

And this is what one of them did to my shirt when they were less than a year old. Note how precise and clean the cut is?

All can be tranquil too.

My happiest childhood memories are of being with - and playing with - '''Sandy", our Welsh corgi. Before 'Sandy", we had "Butch", a corgi that was still around in my my early years that i can't remember much about (despite the photos) . So I have nothing but affection for the corgi breed. But yes, I do sometimes get an evil PP eye!

Mike

i. TE="frans_waterlander, post: 5830173, member: 2220857"]That's just evil, ike. I once held a Corgi puppy for a little while and I was hooked, line and sinker! Instant puppy love!

Like Mike, I thought about making an animated gif. Here is the Corgi sticking his tongue out at the judges. I used Photoshop CC to make the two image gif, which was a learning process since I had never made one before. I followed the steps in, These are the best ways to make your own animated GIF to share

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.

 

A note to this Corgi: you aren't likely to win 'Best in Show' if you stick your tongue out at the judge.

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Cute pooch, Punta. Can't join in the fun for about 2 weeks.

I wimped out last week and went for a composite with an ambiguous light source, so I figured it was time to try some more challenging lighting. I’ve also been conscientiously avoiding any selections that involve hair, so it was clearly time to confront that issue, too. In addition, I’ve been retreating to Lightroom to work with shadows, and I wanted to get some practice using the Photoshop adjustment layers instead. So I decided to take the dog for a walk at my local beach.

I worked almost entirely in Photoshop:

1. Cloned out the hands and replaced them with fur with the help of the clone selection panel. To deal with the missing info on the left, I duplicated the file, flipped it, superimposed it on the original at low opacity so that I could line up the flipped right side of the head with the parts missing on the left side, added a layer mask, and brushed in the missing parts at full opacity.
   
2. Used a quick-selection brush (pretty cool) to select the dog, and used the edge-refine brush to try to pick up the fur edges (not so cool—took a lot of fiddling, and it still doesn't stand up to close scrutiny); loaded the selection into a new file.
   
3. Found an appropriate beach-dune photo from my archive, with strong backlighting and fog wisps.
   
4. Selected the foreground in front of where the dog would be, and used the magic wand selection tool to select some grass to superimpose on the dog; saved it to a layer on the landscape photo.
   
5. Imported the corgi image into the landscape image, resized and positioned the image as a layer under the foreground grass layer, which now will stay on top.
   
6. Duplicated the corgi layer five times with layer masks, with an exposure adjustment layer for three (one overexposed, one underexposed, and one really seriously overexposed for the rim light), and brightness adjustment layers for two (one for the deep shadows; duplicated for even deeper shadows).
   
7. For each of the layers, I used a brush to mask in that particular adjustment where I wanted it, modifying the flow and opacity a lot to get the gradations I wanted.
   

Finally, in Lightroom I used an adjustment brush to increase the foreground clarity and another to un-dehaze the corgi so that the foreground and corgi seemed more like they were in the same world. At the last minute I realized I'd forgotten to add a cast shadow for the dog, so I brushed one in using automask to try to avoid darkening the foreground grass.

Overall, I’m not entirely satisfied with the result (there's something amiss with the shadow hue--I tried using color balance adjustment layers to cool them down or warm them up, but my adjustments were even worse than doing nothing), but I’m ecstatic over how much I learned. And what a distressingly cute dog (I’m also partial to that magnificent Aussie in the background)

Corgi Revenge: Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty humans!

1. Selected the dog from the picture and cloned out the hands. I adjusted the size and brightness to fit the image I was to paste it into.

2. Pasted 2 images (one reversed) of the dog onto a portrait of Putin, who is trying to look manly. I thought it needed appropriate hunting dogs for him.

Curves.