Weekly Post-Processing Challenge - July 26, 2015

[LineMartel]

<p>I shot this last spring in the Hill Country of Texas. I have not come up with a rendition I like so far. So, looking forward to see your creative ideas......</p><div></div>

[LineMartel]

<p>Here is the large version</p><div></div>

[jpk]

<p>Just very classic approach... :-)</p><div></div>

[Dieter Schaefer]

<p>Can't do much about the out-of-focus and smeared flowers up front - the image was shot with wide open aperture and would have needed some stopping down. Bland white sky fooled the meter so that the flower field is underexposed.<br>

<br /> Took the image into ACR first - leveled it using the fence line in the back as a guide. Cropped to 16:9 panorama to eliminate most of the sky. Applied a graduated ND filter to the upper third of the cropped image, reduced exposure by 1 stop and adjusted white balance to create a bluish sky. Then in CS6 increased detail and tonal contrast, used Perfect Enhance to correct the exposure. Eliminated the car and utility pole. Finally, converted to an "oil painting" in photoshop.</p><div></div>

[michaellinder]

<p>Jack, I'd love to see some more detail as to the steps you took using your "classic approach."</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Line, I took the liberty of preparing two versions. The first (b&w) started with some basic adjustments in PSE11 - leveling and tonal level adjustments. I then went to Silver EFEX for the conversion, and used control points to adjust brightness, contrast, and structure.</p>

<p>The second (color) also started with PSE11. After a leveling adjustment, I cropped the image from the left and bottom so as to create a greater impression of leading lines. In Color EFEX, I used the high key filter, followed by levels adjustments in PSE11 and final adjustments in Viveza.</p><div></div>

[michaellinder]

<p> </p><div></div>

[Bill J Boyd]

<p><strong>Line</strong>, you selected a great photo for this week's challenge and it reminds me of Springtime in Texas. Looks like Bluebonnets and maybe Mexican Poppies. I would also speculate that this photo was taken at Wildseed Farms near Fredericksburg. I did minor processing in LR...shadows, highlights. cropping, etc. Still need to learn how to do graduated filter to correct sky tones.</p><div></div>

[Rick Bortnick]

<p>Kind of looked like an old travel-log snap shot. So ...<br>

1:CS6 - straightened &removed car, telephone pole.<br>

2. TopazB&W - Opalotype - Tea Green Fall Off<br>

3 Jacked up the vibrancy</p><div></div>

[Glenn McCreery]

<p>I was not attracted to the sky, which looked rather dreary, so I cropped it, and all the background, out. This left the image too narrow, so I adjusted image size in Photoshop CS5 to change aspect ratio. This distorts the shapes of the flowers, but not too noticeably. Then, since the foreground flowers are rather out-of-focus, I decided to make the whole image look somewhat impressionistic using "paint daub" in "artistic" in CS5. Finally, I increase the warmth and saturation of the image to accentuate colors. This is a good image to work on, since there are so many divergent approaches possible.</p><div></div>

[thadley]

<p>I straightened it, changed the color balance by reducing yellow, I eliminated the post. I duplicated the layer, applied the fractalius filter and then overlayed it on the original. </p><div></div>

[sunil_malkani]

<p>My version: Basic ACR processing with leveling the fence line. In CS6 used Nik collections color efx pro filter solarization default settings, In topaz labs adjust used filter sketch color: default settings, adjusted saturation lower a bit , added border here, used color picker from tree line to the right for border color. Back in CS6 used oil paint to add slight texture for canvas look.</p><div></div>

[MathewDH]

<p>Contrast sharpening technique and first of several crops.</p><div></div>

[MathewDH]

<p>A circular crop.</p><div></div>

[MathewDH]

<p>An Oval shape like old photos used to look like.</p><div></div>

[MathewDH]

<p>A diamond in the garden.</p><div></div>

[Rick Bortnick]

<p>Nice takes on Line's image. Who wants to offer a selection for next week?</p>

[LineMartel]

<p>Sorry for the late input.......it has been a very hectic week....<br>

Thanks to all for participating!</p>

<p><strong>Bill : </strong>I took this shot at Lady Bird Johnson Center, on my way to Bandera...</p>