Post Processing Challenge June 13, 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.

Used PS CS6

From the original image I removed the sky, them selected and copied the remaining,

Downloaded a sunrise image from the web and pasted the copied fishing boat image on top.

Adjusted the color of the fishing boat image to try and color match the sky from the sunrise.

Used the brush tool/color burn to add red/orange highlights to the water.

Flattened the image and did some additional color balance and brightness/contrast adjustments.

Nice photo, Punta! I went with a greenish, stormy or nightfalling look. I used a LUT to enhance the green in the photo, sent it twice through SNS-HDR with adjustments, and then did quite a few gradients in Camera Raw. Before I started, I used Gigapixel AI x 6 to hopefully add more resolution and sharpness before I reverted it to the original dimensions. Sometimes this helps.

I also went for a sunrise/sunset look. I knew I wanted practice with Lab channels, but then I made the strategic error of thinking to myself that there’s no point in trying to clone away the foreground trees, given the gradients in wave patterns, tones, and hues. So naturally I had to try—bad decision, good practice.

1. Lightroom: adjusted whites and highlights to try to get as much detail as possible in the brightest part; and increased clarity slightly. In retrospect, I should also have corrected for chromatic aberration.
   
2. Photoshop: switched to Lab space, steepened the a and b channel curves and superimposed the resulting layers at about 50% opacity over the background to give more variation in the colors. I shifted the b midpoint slightly toward yellow and the a slightly toward magenta.
   
3. Modified the L curve to increase contrast in mid-highlights and mid-darks, leaving the midtone alone (i.e., double-S curve)
   
4. Then started cloning. I originally tried to reconstruct the brights behind the large right-hand tree (twice), then gave up and ad-libbed from elsewhere; the other parts were fairly close reconstructions with a small clone stamp. Had lunch two hours late.
   
5. I also tried unsuccessfully to clone out the blown-out major highlight above the wake, but finally gave up. Good decision.
   
6. Lightroom: cropped; removed chromatic aberration; upped the midpoint of the red channel very slightly; split-toned to cool the darks and warm the brights; used adjustment brush to lighten and add clarity to the boat; used another to make the floats look a bit less radioactive.
   
7. The crop had left a somewhat awkward aspect ratio, so I went back to Photoshop and stretched the image slightly vertically.
   
8. Back in Lightroom, I reduced saturation slightly and increased vibrance, then sharpened to bring out the texture in the wake.
   

A duotone version from me (yellow highlights, blue shadows). I used layers of solid color and blended them to tonal ranges (highlights or shadows). Added contrast in the background using curves with a gradient mask. The effect shown is much stronger than I'd normally use!

Loch Ness fishing. I added Nessie, then used NIK Color Efex graduated fog and Topax Simplify with watercolor settings.

Yet another version. This one is more colorful and hopefully makes the far shore a focal point too. I think one of the Redfield plugins helped with the color, along with tweaks in Luminar 4.

Like Tom, I keep coming back to this because there’s so much here to play with. I started improvising on the theme of wake and decided to go abstract. This led me back into PS to make the two sides of the wake symmetrical, distort the perspective, and stretch parts to fill in the resulting missing areas. I went back into Lab mode to change the hues toward gold, desaturate the blues, and add contrast. In Lightroom, I reduced the black point, increased clarity to quasi-criminal levels, added a few brush strokes to add even more clarity to the center of the wake and to the lower right dark area, and cloned out a seam I’d accidentally left. I’d originally planned this to have a vertical orientation, but I tried rotating it and discovered I liked this one best because the tweaked symmetry and perspective make it slightly disorienting.