Post Processing Challenge 1st April 2017

This weeks challenge source photo, for added interest please give details of steps taken.

Lyme Regis Dorset UK.

The steps I took are: Photoshop: Crop left, right, and bottom. Added a global curve with the center pulled down. Blurred a copy of the sky to reduce the banding that the curve introduced. In On1, I added a Dynamic Contrast layer on all but the sky and added a vignette.

 

Allyn

 

• Crop
  
• Up-res (4x linear)
  
• Topaz Adjust (Comic Book preset)
  
• Topaz Black & White Effects (Cartoon preset)
  

 

A slow response so far. All adjustment in LR. Crop, Selective Exposure sky and building, +21 Clarity, +12 Vibrance, -8 Vignetting.

Nice picture but a little cluttered.

Cropped left right and bottom and cloned out heads at bottom for a bit more space

Used Color EFEX pro 4 filters - Tonal contrast and Pro contrast.

Applied White Neutraliser using "Wedding dresses" setting

 

This is Silver Sands Version in the Outdoor pallet of Macphun Tonality, with split toning and vignetting:

 

CopyrightRonHyde2014-DxO-Version by Ron Hyde, on Flickr

 

Processed with DxO Optics Pro 11.3.1.

Cropped 3:2 to cut out people at the bottom and some stuff on the dock to the right

Leveled Horizon

Applied DxO's "Clearview" to cut through haze at level 52

Set WB on one of the grey/white boat tops, but it was a little too blue, so I warmed Temperature a bit

Raised Shadows to level 33

Cut Highlights to level -12

Raised Contrast to Level 33

Raised Microcontrast to Level 13

Raised overall Exposure Compensation by +30, since Clearview had darkened things overall

I found I was really enjoying the random swarm of boats, so I figured I'd concentrate on them. The colors were distracting me from the shapes and seemed a little bit too random, so I decided to convert to B&W:

 

The steps:

1. Import into LR6; Initial crop
   
2. Convert to B&W
   
3. Darkened blues using B&W sliders (wanted to darken the water, but it ended up darkening the blue boat covers too much)
   
4. Modified tone curve to increase contrast in light tones
   
5. In Basic, reduced highlights and shadows, increased blacks, increased clarity, reduced overall contrast
   
6. Exported to Elements 14 and moved a boat
   
7. Back in Lightroom, did the final crop
   
8. Darkened the seawall with an adjustment brush
   
9. Lightened what had been blue boat covers (adjustment brush)
   
10. Used adjustment brush to darken a corner of a boat on the upper left edge
    

Little Planet treatment applied in Elements.

Little Planet treatment applied in Elements.

 

Ron would like that.

I like Allyn's sky, so I tried to do something similar in CS5 by selecting the sky and adjusting levels. I wanted to leave more water surrounding the boats, so instead of cropping out distractions, including boats on the left, I cloned patches of water and pasted over the distractions. I then used tonal contrast in ColorEfex to increase highlight contrast, cropped, and burned edges.

Thanks for posing these challenges, Gerald!

I was having too much fun with it, so I couldn't leave well enough alone--here's a second take on it. I admit that I did this version mostly to see if I could make it work (though if I were painting the scene, this is probably close to what I would have ended up with):

1. Import into LR6; Initial crop
   
2. Reduce exposure .86 stop
   
3. Adjust white balance
   
4. Reduce highlights, reduce shadows, increase whites, increase clarity and vibrance slightly
   
5. Adjust tone curve to increase contrast in lights and darken water
   
6. Export to Elements 14 and clone away almost everything I didn’t want
   
7. Return to Lightroom
   
8. Export to Elements 14 again and clone away the parts I missed the first time
   
9. Return to Lightroom
   
10. Export to Elements again and clone away the parts I missed both the first and second times
    
11. Return to Lightroom
    

Lots of good stuff here this week, but I think I like Glenn's the best. He did a nice, realistic overall processing, with one of the most out of the box adjustments to the original scene. With out seeing the original, you wouldn't suspect that he'd made such a wholesale change. I think that he strengthened the composition considerably, by adding that clear lane of water and keeping the BG island largely intact. His sky treatment was one of several nice efforts.

Hi folks, thank you all for your contributions. After a slow start things picked up and I feel there was a worthwhile response.

Now I have a large supply of second rate photos in need of help and can continue setting the challenge, but if anyone fancies having ago??

Please let me and others know...........................Best regards GC.