Weekly Post Processing Challenge 16 June 2018

I will post something for this weeks challenge if nobody minds. This was Santa Monica beach July 18th 2012 with the remnants of a hurricane flowing over Southern California. This is from the unprocessed raw file which isn't even close to what it felt like to be there. Everyone along the beach stopped what they were doing because we all knew we would never see anything like this again in our lives. It has been frustrating to try and get the actual feeling in the photo that was there that day. It was like being wrapped in a warm red blanket. I will post my version in a day or two. You will think I overdid the processing and that would not be true.

Nice image to work with. I used LR to adjust shadows / highlights and a bit of cropping. Color efex pro 4 for Detail extractor and tonal contrast. Added frame in PS Elements.

Slight crop, conversion in ACR to b/w, some levels and shadows adjustments, cloned out the two other people on the path, a little dodging and burning. warm toning.

 

 

I was trying for a less magenta, but still reddish, color balance, so I adjusted color balance in Photoshop to reduce magenta, increase yellow, and increase red. I used NIK ColorEfex tonal contrast and brilliance and warmth filters to increase highlight contrast and increase warmth. I added a new duplicate layer, converted it to black and white in SilverEfex, and used a luminosity blend mode with about a 60% opacity. This is a technique that I learned from Line Martel in a previous, about a month old, PPC. I like the effect, although I am not sure how to describe it. Finally, I straightened the slightly crooked horizon, since I like horizontal ocean horizons.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Glenn McCreery

PN-ProcessingChallenge06-16-2018_DxO by David Stephens, on Flickr

 

Processed with DxO PhotoLab

Highlights -30

Shadows +20

Clearview +98

Very slight crop

 

I approached the task by asking myself what I would feature if I were painting the scene, then proceeded to take grievous liberties with the original image, mostly to see if I could get away with it convincingly. In approximate order:

 

Lightroom:

1. increased whites +41 and reduced highlights -57
   
2. darkened purples -39, reds -4, and yellows -36 in HSL panel
   
3. added graduated filter to foreground: increased exposure, increased clarity, lightened shadows, increased temperature +83, and reduced tint -12
   
4. added graduated filters in corners to reduce vignetting
   
5. added brush stroke to darken the sand
   
6. added brush stroke to add clarity to the sweatshirt to make the writing stand out
   
7. healed out the tire tracks on the right
   

Photoshop:

1. straightened the horizon by warping the edges
   
2. liquified near the warped edges to fill in some pixels so I wouldn’t need to crop
   

Lightroom: cloned out the couple, leaving a mess that needed to be cleaned up in Photoshop through more controlled cloning.

 

Lightroom: increased saturation slightly on the path

Here is one of my final versions. The big problem I had was that the camera (5D MKII) saw more orange when to the eye everything was red. I used the color adjustments in Lightroom and in the orange channel moved the hue slider to the left and reduces saturation, luminance. White balance set to 4380. shadows +100 whites +40. I had the RAW file to work with though and that makes a difference. The vignette was lens related a Sigma 24-70 2.8 older version.

Hard to put this in with all the wonderful efforts. I simple used a luminosity mask to keep the sky the same but increase the brightness on the foreground. Leslie your take is breath taking. Thank you for the explanation I am just starting and I learn a lot form post like yours.

[ATTACH=full]1250228[/ATTACH] I will post something for this weeks challenge if nobody minds. This was Santa Monica beach July 18th 2012 with the remnants of a hurricane flowing over Southern California. This is from the unprocessed raw file which isn't even close to what it felt like to be there. Everyone along the beach stopped what they were doing because we all knew we would never see anything like this again in our lives. It has been frustrating to try and get the actual feeling in the photo that was there that day. It was like being wrapped in a warm red blanket. I will post my version in a day or two. You will think I overdid the processing and that would not be true.

Thanks JR for this weeks challenge it's good to see a new challenge setter.

I have been trying to encourage more people to give it a go, so if anyone else out there would like to step forward. Give it a go.

You will think I overdid the processing and that would not be true.

People can disagree on what’s overprocessed and it often doesn’t take having been there to know it. Visual memory and how visual memory is applied photographically vary. I’ve seen scenes presented in a neon, artificial, Disney-esque way that the photographer claims is just what the scene looked like. It may, in fact, be what it looked like to him, though perhaps not to most others who were there. In any case, a photographer’s claim of accuracy rarely convinces me of the “truth” of a photo. A photo either rings true (often on a deeper level than “accuracy”) or it doesn’t. And that happens based on the elements within the frame working together in a particular way: objects, composition, color, light, density, saturation, gradation, etc,) As a viewer, I’m aware I’m relating to a picture. My caring about or feeling for the original scene or situation may play a big or small part or no part at all. But I’m keenly aware that the visual memory and how a photographer translates that memory in post processing work can vary wildly and that a photographer’s telling me “this is what it looked like” and what it actually looked like may be in sharp contrast, depending on both the visual acuity of the photographer and the ability to actually photographically translate what he thinks he’s remembering.

 

Then there’s the whole issue of to what extent a photo may or may not be an accurate representation of what was. I’m one who thinks photos don’t necessarily have to even try to be copies of the reality at the time of shooting. The original reality can merely be the raw materials from which an imaginative picture gets created, not remembered. In those cases, the internal integrity and workings of the various elements and photographic qualities are more important than fidelity to the external reality taking place when the photo was shot.

All adjustments in LR. Level horizon. Reduce highlights and open shadows.Top third lower exposure and push color temp towards blue. Bottom third reduce saturation. Love pink girl increase exposure. Couple reduce exposure. Adjust white and black points. Finally apply vignette.

JR, looking at your reworking of the photo, I’d question two things, both in terms of what the actual scene may have looked like and in terms of how the photo looks regardless of the actual scene. My guess would be that the quality of light, shadow, and atmosphere was more like your original than the reworked version, which opens up the shadows more than I suspect they were at the time and more than I think the mood of the photo itself might warrant. The other thing I notice is how similarly the quality and saturation of the red light on the road and the sand are in your reworking effort, which I don’t think would have been the case at the scene and I think would make for a better photo if the sand reflected that light and color more differently from the road.

Also, JR, notice a third fairly important thing. In your original, and I imagine at the scene, there's a nice separation of the haze from the water in the thin strip of water in front of the mountain. Your reworking gets rid of that separation making it seem like all that could be seen was a fairly thick strip of haze. The delicacy of the haze above the stronger glare of the water in the original is quite visually nuanced. Look at all the other versions posted, and you'll notice that separation between stronger water and more atmospheric haze above it is preserved. I suspect that in saturating the reds, you lost that distinction which, to me, is a sign of photographic over-saturation. That doesn't mean the sky wasn't as red as what you're remembering. It just means that your method of rendering that red caused other unnatural occurrences in the photo.

Glenn's treatment is close to what the camera actually saw, but in person it was very red. As you know the camera sees colors very differently than the human eye. That loss of separation between water and mountain was due to lifting the shadows so much. My posted treatment is only one of five different ones I have done of this photo. Its a fun one to experiment with. Here is a link to the same sunset by a different photographer.

As you know the camera sees colors very differently than the human eye.

Yes. But I'm not sure what your point is. That doesn't mean your renderings are near what the human eye or the camera saw. I'd say they're not. Look at the sky, for example, of your original. Sure, the camera may see the sky differently from the human eye. But the camera didn't magically create those red, lighter wisps of clouds in the upper right of the sky in the original against the more magenta background. Now look at your reworking, where those wisps of clouds have all but disappeared or at the very least look artificially smeared into the sky. Again, the redder color you've chosen may be closer to the color of the sky you saw, but your rendering of it has caused the texture of the sky to be greatly undermined and it is no longer showing either the sky as the human eye would have seen it on that day or as the camera saw it.

 

If you were billing this as merely a creation of your imagination based on what you photographed that day, I'd accept it as such even if I didn't particularly care for it. But you've billed it as being more accurate (and that you know it's more accurate) because you were there than what the raw file showed, and I think that's not the case.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Norma Desmond

Fred the point of this thread is you get to do your own artistic rendering of the photo.

Fred the point of this thread is you get to do your own artistic rendering of the photo.

I think the point of this thread is to post process the photo as we see fit. No mention is made of artistry. An "artistic rendering" would be up to each individual if that's what he or she chooses. Others might not want to be "artistic" at all, and that's ok, too.

 

But that wasn't my point. As I said, had you told us you were going to show us your artistic interpretation, I doubt I would have responded. Instead, though, you chose to introduce your photo by saying this . . .

You will think I overdid the processing and that would not be true.

Just because we're each interpreting the scene as we want doesn't mean we each have to suspend all matters of taste and criticism. If I think you overdid the processing, which I do, I won't be told by you that's not true. And, when I'm told in advance that my disagreeing with you is automatically untrue, and you post something processed in such a way as it destroys many of the original's finer details, I'll speak up.

 

I've had my own work critiqued in this way, more so when I've talked about my work somewhat cluelessly, which I've also done. In the long run, it benefitted me because I was open to listening to all opinions, even when I felt I was being creative. My creativity has never been and never will be immune from criticism. If it was immune, it would be no fun at all. I don't want my stuff blindly accepted just because I think of myself as an artist.

cloned out the two other people

Actually, you *almost* cloned out the other people--there's a disembodied head still floating there, off in the distance...it adds kind of a surreal touch....

Actually, you *almost* cloned out the other people--there's a disembodied head still floating there, off in the distance...it adds kind of a surreal touch....

LOL. There is, indeed. And I’d love to take artistic credit for the surrealist touch, but I’ll instead tell you it was a careless error. Thanks for pointing it out!

I lurk on these threads with some interest because I started the Post-Processing Challenge a number of years ago, but lost interest because it didn't develop into what I'd intended. I had hoped it would be a place where folks (both newbies and oldbies) could get help with and suggestions on how others might process an image, but instead it got more experimental, and most folks just wanted to have fun with the 'challenge' image. Nothing wrong with that direction and I'm glad to see a small group still maintains some interest.

 

This week, I found JRC's interpretation very interesting given the stark difference in what the camera 'saw' and what he recalled seeing. Perhaps it's true, as Fred suggests, that what JR saw couldn't possibly have been reality, but I think his example serves to show that, with photography, the camera is only part of the equation. I've occasionally had people criticize post-processing as decreasing the integrity of an image, but these folks don't understand that the camera is limited by the algorithms designed by the programmers, and cannot possibly account for what each human eye 'sees.' So, I'd like to compliment JR on his example this week. I think it makes this one of the more useful 'Challenges' posted in a while.

I know I'm rather late to this party. Anyway . . . PSE15: cropped somewhat from right and top; then reduced the magenta and purple casts; ten, using levels, boosted highlights and midtones, and reduced shadow output. Converted to b&w in Silver Efex, and also made tonal and sharpness adjustments. Finally, used PSE15's blur tool on the clouds.