Weekly Processing Challenge - Feb. 8, 2015

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>This week's challenge is a shot I took over the summer at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo outside of Colorado Springs. It was taken, in jpeg mode, through the plexi-glass enclosure with my Panasonic Lumix FZ200 at full zoom. It's presented here exactly as it came out of the camera. </p>

<p>The challenge for the participants is to produce your best portrait of this fella. I came across this article on photo.net a few weeks ago that shows what I think is a pretty amazing transformation of a basic zoo shot:<br>

http://www.photo.net/learn/digital-photography-workflow/advanced-photoshop-tutorials/artistic-animals/</p>

<p>Try to fight the urge to add extra objects to the frame, and just work with what's there. I've worked it myself, but don't know that I really like what I've done, so I'm anxious to see other renditions.</p>

<p>Most of all, have fun.<br>

</p><div></div>

<p>And the full-sized version...</p><div></div>

<p>Here's my take: http://www.joedempseyphoto.com/gorilla2.jpg</p>

<p>As the image had the plexi problem I decided on a blur. In CS6 used auto tone & color (sorta cheated there :) ). It made the eyes a tad to dark so I added a a layer in overlay blend & lightened the eye sockets a tad. Selected just the eyes & saturated them a bit. I then went to Iris Blur filter & kept the face & hand in focus & gently blurred the rest. Lastly high pass sharpen & put a grey border on the image.</p><div></div>

<p>I suppose I should have put something besides a link. I opened in camera raw and worked with clarity, contrast, exposure, blacks & white until I was close and finished in Photoshop CC2014. I did some gradient diagonal copies on upper left, right and lower left corners and enriched those. Then merged, did a 3-point color correction, picked up some texture in the fuzzy section and sharpened.</p><div></div>

<p>I liked Rick's approach, but try as I could, I couldn't get reasonably accurate colors. So I took a different approach and using GIMP converted to B&W with a red filter, slightly darkened the overall picture while slightly boosting contrast. Medium sharpening. End result,still lower rh corner glare, but an imposing image.</p><div></div>

<p>My effort with this image was mainly to make the lighting and contrast seem more evenly distributed below the chin with selective dodging, burning, and sharpening in Apple Aperture. I also blurred and reduced the saturation of the background, sharpened the facial features, and added a small amount of vignetting. And Bill, I did resit putting Tarzan in the background. It's a very nice portrait of a thoughtful and intelligent animal.</p><div></div>

<p>I tried to remove the haze with a curve layer blended as overlay and an unsharp mask. Adjusted lighting in Color Efex. Extracted details in Topaz Adjust. The details in the bottom right corner were pretty much lost. So, I painted some hair back. Also painted a background. Adjusted again in Color Efex.</p><div></div>

<p>...and a monochrome....</p><div></div>

<p>Here you go Bill - I like the pose.<br>

<img src="http://www.photomatter.com/_images/00d7Bi-554745684b-rz.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Some really great efforts thus far!</p>

<p>Line, how do you paint in a background like that?</p>

<p>Bill<br>

For the background I use brushes in PS. There are lots of free brushes you can download (be sure to read the license, as some you need attribution). I use mostly "grunge" brushes. Keep the colors within the palette of the subject, or use complementary. If there is fine details like hair, try to use the color on the original background for that area. Paint on a duplicate layer of the original. Don't worry about painting over the subject, as you will use a mask to clean it up after. I have been using this method for a long time and know my brushes pretty well. And I use to do a lot of painting... I recently got a Wacom tablet, and it makes the task of blending and masking much easier as I can work with brush pressure and angle. But as I said, I have used this method for a long time using only a mouse for the same results...</p>

<p>Used the Dragan effect filters</p><div></div>

<p>Nice Photo to work with this week.</p><div></div>

<p>I was interested to see what could be achieved with Lightroom, so here we go. (I did drop it into PS briefly to add a border.)</p><div></div>

<p>Bill - This is an excellent choice for this week's challenge. All of the nuances in this magnificent creature's fur made it obvious to me; I had to go B&W.</p>

<p>I started with basic adjustments in PSE11 - levels and resizing. Then I went to Color Efex to adjust the contrast and to add darkened highlights. I also used the darken/lighten filter to lighten the eyes and the surrounding area. Finally, I did the conversion in Silver Efex Pro and also added some structure to the midtown and dark areas.</p><div></div>

<p>I just love the autocorrect feature on my iMac and my own carelessness not to notice the results. Please substitute "midtone" for "midtown."</p>

<p>here is my version, used ACR basic processing, in CS6 used topaz labs adjust 5 and filter sketch Med. finally cropped the left frame side to tighten the subject.</p><div></div>

<p>Really nice work! All improved the original significantly. Glenn, thanks for suppressing your inner Tarzan ;). My inclination would have been to put a bow-tie on him. </p>

<p>We have a volunteer to post next week's challenge already (one of our 'lurkers'), but if someone wants to sign up for the week of the 22nd, let me know. Would be nice to stay a week ahead. As always, we have some 'regulars' who are willing to throw something out here, but new 'challengers' are always encouraged. </p>

 

<p>Here's my version of the big fella. Can't recall everything that was done, but I know I added a couple of levels adjustment layers and blended them as multiply to try to get rid of some of the plexi film, did some blurring of the background with a layer with he gorilla masked out, and added a hue/saturation adjustment layer to change the hue some. I added a photo filter layer as well, but can't recall exactly what. I did some masking on various layer, changing the mask opacity to taste.</p><div></div>

<p>Here's another go.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Here's another go with hopefully the correct size.<br>

Run through RAW converter in Lightroom 5.7 and resized with Elements 10</p><div></div>