Weekly Post Processing Challenge December 15, 2018

"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)

This is my first go at posting the challenge. The moon was setting to the west of Punta Fria as the sun rose to the east.

This is a low res version of the image for reference only. Please click on the 'view attachment' on the post above for the high res version.

I obviously did something wrong when posting the original.

What a great photo, @PuntaColorada! I love the subtlety of the colors in the sky! I played around with it and eventually just decided to try and make the original a bit brighter and a bit less "muddy" (no offense intended, just my perception!). I'm interested in color grading at the moment but I soon discovered that nothing in my LUT library adds to or improves on the original colors. A valuable exercise!

So my PP steps were:

- adjust levels

- brighten the mid-tones by a few per cent

- brighten the whites of the buildings a shade to make them stand out more

- increase the saturation by a few per cent

- apply a LUT that enhances the saturation and contrast

Most of these adjustments were applied at 50% or less and the group of adjustments as a whole was applied at 50%. Somehow, I didn't have the inclination to disturb the serenity of this photo by adding other objects (boats, planes, submarines. lighthouses). Looking forward to other versions!

For some reason, I didn't get the usual option of adding a thumbnail or full image when posting. Posting now seems limited to posting and viewing attachments.

Mike

What a great photo, @PuntaColorada! I love the subtlety of the colors in the sky! I played around with it and eventually just decided to try and make the original a bit brighter and a bit less "muddy" (no offense intended, just my perception!). I'm interested in color grading at the moment but I soon discovered that nothing in my LUT library adds to or improves on the original colors. A valuable exercise!

So my PP steps were:

- adjust levels

- brighten the mid-tones by a few per cent

- brighten the whites of the buildings a shade to make them stand out more

- increase the saturation by a few per cent

- apply a LUT that enhances the saturation and contrast

Most of these adjustments were applied at 50% or less and the group of adjustments as a whole was applied at 50%. Somehow, I didn't have the inclination to disturb the serenity of this photo by adding other objects (boats, planes, submarines. lighthouses). Looking forward to other versions!

 

[ATTACH=full]1275279[/ATTACH]

I saw your image. It was 5MP. Looks great.

A smaller file:

Not entirely pleased with this, but there you have it. Crop, adjust color, exposure & fractionally sharpen. Sometimes you know something you are working on will only get worse :eek:

I offer two abstractions....

1:

Hi Punta (do we call you Punta?). Thank you for posting this weeks challenge. I like the composition so no cropping but slight adjustment to the horizon. All adjustments in Lightroom 5.7, as the moon is so prominent I've set it later in the day. Converted to B&W, using the adjustment tool I switched on a few lights. The lighter areas on the water are meant to show reflections of the moon, I'm not convinced it worked that well.

I've found using someone else's photo a pleasure.

Thank you Gerald. Punta is fine.

I very much like what you did with this image as well as what others have done.

I have a number of candidate images selected for the future; so, If nobody comes forward, I can continue for a while. Like you must have experienced, I'll miss the fun of working on other people's images.

I don't know where I went wrong posting this file. I wasn't given the option of posting the full image or a thumbnail. A possibility is that I am using Chrome on a Mac which does not like Flash. In the future, I'll try posting from Safari. It's either that or perhaps my files need to be a bit smaller.

I don't know where I went wrong posting this file. I wasn't given the option of posting the full image or a thumbnail. A possibility is that I am using Chrome on a Mac which does not like Flash. In the future, I'll try posting from Safari. It's either that or perhaps my files need to be a bit smaller.

Chrome works OK with windows for posting. It could be that you did nothing wrong, it is not unusual for PhotoNet to be a bit flaky....................GC.

I've been trying to learn a bit more about adjusting separate RGB channels (using 'curves') and to apply adjustment layers (using blending options) only to shadows, mid-tones or highlights in Photoshop. This is all pretty new to me because I usually just use masks on adjustment layers. Anyway, I decided to use this week's PP challenge just to play around with and this is what I came up with:

- a levels adjustment (same as my previous version)

- a channels adjustments (curves and color balance) that boost the magenta and yellow saturation

- a separate color balance adjustment that restores some blue to the sea

- a B&W highlight adjustment to partly correct a "yellow" moon

It's nothing special, just mentioning a different workflow.

Apparently the size of PuntaColorada's original hi-res file was a little larger than the sizes we are used to posting here, thus the problems with links and/or the photo correctly posting? Here's a photo showing two OP files (this week and last week) as measured by Photoshop's Image Size command:

Great image Punta. My goal was to push the color as far as I could. All changes made in Gimp. I made a set of luminosity mask and used them to tone the dark's with a blue to blue-green and the light with orange to yellow.

Rick inspired me to do something "artistic." Initially, used NIK noise reduction. Then, in PSE15, resized, [ATTACH=full]1275595[/ATTACH] inverted colors, then used sponge tool for some selective boosts of saturation, and finally added texture. Sharpened using Output Sharpener.

Michael, once in a blue supermoon! I seem to recall that that was actually the case here! How perceptive of you!

Quote Tom R....... Apparently the size of PuntaColorada's original hi-res file was a little larger than the sizes we are used to posting here.

Tom you may well have found the problem, Punta's pixel dimensions are higher than any of my camera's native files.....................GC.

I mostly used NIK ColorEfex tonal contrast and glamour glow filters, plus increased contrast of moon and reduced it's saturation. Nice image to work with.