Post Processing Challenge Saturday 5 Aug 2017

What the heck ... something different. Musikfest has started in Bethlehem (PA that is). Santana was the opening act this year. Here's one from a previous session.

Thanks for posting Rick, I was just thinking I was going to find another for this week............Best regards GC.

Levels, crop, color adjust and contrast and cloned a few distractions.

 

Interesting challenge. All adjustments in LR. Crop top and Left. Exposure +4, Highlights -57, Whites +36, Clarity +26. Noise Reduction - Luminance 50 & Color 60. Sharpening 68 with mask 87. Removed yellow highlight from left edge, finally darken lower right corner.

No cropping. Levels and curves adjustments, got rid of a little of the green tint on the lead guitarist. Amped up highlights (for "rhythmic punctuation") on the cymbals, background mics, and a few other spots. Opened up shadows on the drum set, so there'd be some depth and detail there. Kept as much shadow detail throughout, especially on their hair to keep the look naturalistic while hopefully not losing the drama of the stage lighting.

Edited August 5, 2017 by Norma Desmond

LR to adjust shadows and exposure. Then used Detail Extractor in Color Efex Pro 4.

Despite the variety of colors in this image, I decided up front to convert it to b&w. I also decided not to crop. The conversion and further tonal and sharpness adjustments were done in Silver Efex.

Thanks for posting Rick, I was just thinking I was going to find another for this week............Best regards GC.

 

Good call on the challenge image, Rick.

In DxO Optics Pro 11.4.2. WB on tenor's shirt, then warm a little. 5:4 aspect ratio. Raise level a bunch.

 

PN-Challenge08-05-2017-1 by David Stephens, on Flickr

Thanks all & I like what you all have done

I don't usually look in the "challenge" threads, but after seeing a different post by Fred G, I thought I'd peek in.

 

Done in the GIMP. I lifted the "exposure" (w/my own method) way up, then lifted blue channel since it was so low. I wanted to keep dark areas dark, both for ambience AND to keep the dark gritty noise down, but I thought the mid-tones needed to be lifted (you WOULD see them easily, in person). So I made a soft mask (dupe layer, desaturate, blur slightly, invert to negative, and use curves to make it "weak") to protect the highlights. Result is that midtones come up without blowing highlights.

 

Lightroom adjust exposure cropped a little, move to Silver Efex, apply Film Noir 1 preset.