Postprocessing Challenge 08 February 2019

Reminder:

"Another weekly challenge.

If, anyone else would like to post next week please give it a go, upload a High resolution jpeg. Just indicate your intentions by Thursday or early Friday.

Remember there are no rules you can do what you wish in your interpretation, please can you give information of the steps taken and software used to add interest.

It is not meant as a competition just a bit of fun." (Gerald Cafferty)

I shot this about a year ago in San Juan, Puerto Rico. For your convenience, I resized the image to 3000 x 2000.

Great initiitiaf. @michaellinder!

Thanks very much, Mike. Simply FYI, I don't speak Twitterese.

I tried various approaches and ended up with this. Aspect ratio change, cloning, warping, added horse and bison calf, etc.

A little cropping with a watercolor application.

Thank you for posting Michael! This is a great image to work with!

I am going to try PP using various software programs more or less independently to see what happens and experience the challenges/limitations in each. The first is using LR only.

I used the gradient tool on the top and bottom and reduced the sharpness on both to produce a tilt/shift type of blur to add depth. I then used the tone curve, medium contrast and the HSL/Colour sliders to boost orange red and blue to give the doors and wall more colour. I took down the greens a bit as well. I had to go back to the upper gradient to reduce the saturation because the HSL/Colour adjustments on the whole image made the sky much too blue. I added a bit of a vignette and that was that; all in LR.

The next 2 were with Nik software only.

I really like the U-Point technology. I have to wonder what Nik could have achieved if Google had not entered the picture. It reminds me that current fundamental algorithms for post processing have been around for quite a while.

The first is using Viveza. I warmed up the whole image and used curves to add contrast. Then I used the U-Points to further warm up the doors, bring out colours and structure in the wall and the right-hand rock, and deepen the blue in the sky.

This is the result using Silver Efex Pro 2. Basically, I made the image more contrasty and detailed in the mid tones and added a sepia tint. I probably could have fished through the presets (or recipes) to find something similar; but, what's the fun in that?

Bill J Boyd has posted a version from what I think is Nik Color Efex Pro 4 so I won't go there.

This one is with On1 Camera Raw 2019.

I first used the following filters in this order Dynamic Contrast, Colour Adjustment, LUTs (colour look up tables), Lens Blur, Vignette and finally Borders. Of course, I messed with the sliders in each of those filters.

And lastly, Photoshop CC 2019.

Because I was trying to do everything in PS rather than using LR with PS, I used the camera raw filter in PS to adjust the white and black points. Next was a Hue/ Sat adjustment layer to boost the oranges and blues. I used an action I had made that included High Pass Sharpening to bring out the details. Then a curves adjustment layer to increase contrast, a Tilt-Shift Blur, some burning for the vignette, text for fun and an action to stroke the border.

So, 4 sets of software yielding similar PP results (except for the B&W).

File sizes after editing, flattening but BEFORE any resizing or JPEG final compression were:

LR CC Classic: 4.8MB (I don't know how much the catalogue file increased)

Nik Viveza: 38MB (.tif)

Nik Silver Efex Pro 2: 36MB (.tif)

On1 Photo Raw 2019: 82.6MB (.psd)

Photoshop CC 2019: 17.2MB (.psd)

It's a good thing hard drives are relatively cheap!

As I sometimes do, I let my fantasy go wild with this one. I kept wondering what might be behind those doors and - if the doors were't there - what else might there be instead? My attempts at creating 'opened doors' came to nothing so I went with the idea of tunnels. I like people in photos so I added a couple. All the photos I re-used with modification were licensed for this under a 'Creative Commons' license. The attributions/sources are shown at the bottom.

Licenses/attributions:

All the photos mentioned below were re-used with modification:

Aquarium Tunnel (Linnaea Mallette) freely re-usable under CC0

Book Tunnel (Petr Kratochvil) freely re-usable under CC0

Prospect Tunnel (TJBlackwell), sourced at [PLAIN]File:Prospect Tunnel.jpg - Wikimedia Commons[/PLAIN] re-used under CC BY 3.0

People on the Beach (Paul Brennan) freely re-usable under CC0

Female joggers on foggy Morro Strand State Beach (Mike Baird), sourced at File:Female joggers on foggy Morro Strand State Beach.jpg - Wikimedia Commons and re-used under CC By 2.0

Abstract (1): I started in PSE15 by making tonal adjustments using levels. Then I went to PSE15's artistic menu and used "posterize edges" and then "sponge." Finally, I sharpened with NIK's Output Sharpener.

Abstract (2) After again making levels adjustments, I went to Silver Efex and applied a wet plate filter that resulted in a gold/sepia BG. Back in PSE, I readjusted levels. Finally, I imported a thick black border using Color Efex.

One more from me: "Red Doors''. For the weekly PP challenge, I enjoy playing around with color adjustments using different techniques in PS just to experiment with what's possible and useful. For this version, I used the Image/Adjustments/Match Color function. I pre-loaded a painting by Cezanne to use as a source of colors to be matched. I also tried a couple of other paintings but they turned out pretty much the same o_O. Anyway, the doors became red and the grass got a slightly different hue. The stonework was pretty much unchanged (grey) so I added a masked color layer to warm it up and another to redden the brickwork. I also used a high pass filter with a gradient mask to sharpen the foreground grass while leaving the background untouched. I desaturated the sky so that it didn't look too weird. Before and after:

Original and creative work, @michaellinder, I love it! I like your abstract work and it's great to see your 'abstract' skills applied here too.

Abstract (2) After again making levels adjustments, I went to Silver Efex and applied a wet plate filter that resulted in a gold/sepia BG. Back in PSE, I readjusted levels. Finally, I imported a thick black border using Color Efex.

 

 

[ATTACH=full]1282331[/ATTACH]

Mike, since I still am fumbling about with the site's system for posting images to a forum like this one, can you please enlighten me on how to post more than one without any duplications of the original?

Many thanks,

michael

Hi Michael,

I've just noticed your post in the PPC thread. I thought I'd 'watched' this forum but I guess that means I only get alerts for new threads and not new replies. I'll remember to watch each PPC thread next time! This is a copy of my PM to you for anyone else who might have a similar question.

Uploading multiple images in one post is actually quite simple (see image below).

- Clicking on the 'Upload File' button uploads 1 image

- Clicking on the same buttton again uploads a 2nd image

- Clicking on the same button again uploads a 3rd image, and so on

You can then insert multiple images, either as full images or as thumbnails. Each image is inserted (in-line) at the point where your cursor is in the text box. So in the example below, if I inserted both images at once, they would appear one on top of each other below the "initial text".

It's often useful to add text between (or after) images. I think there are two basic ways of doing this:

1. By far the easiest way is to insert an image, insert some new lines (Enter key on the keyboard) and some text and maybe one or two new lines and then insert the second image. Repeat for 3rd, 4th images.

2. Since all images are inserted 'in line' with the text, an alternative way is to just to insert all images on top of each other and then position the cursor at the right hand side of an image (mouse/forward arrow) and then insert (type) newlines and text and any additional newlines.

I hope this helps (and works!), let me know.

Best wishes,

Mike

Mike, since I still am fumbling about with the site's system for posting images to a forum like this one, can you please enlighten me on how to post more than one without any duplications of the original?

 

Many thanks,

 

michael