Post processing Challenge for April 24, 2020

[Glenn McCreery]

There are no rules as to how you apply your post processing to this image; but, please let us know what you have done so we can all learn.

If you would like to post a candidate image next week, please ensure it is of sufficiently high resolution for manipulation by the participants (3000px on the long side, 300dpi for example).

 

Most of all, let's have fun while we are learning or demonstrating how we use our post-processing software, imaginations and interpretations.

 

Have fun!

Winter morning dog walk on hills above Idaho Falls, Idaho.

[Bill J Boyd]

This is an outstanding image, Glen. I did my usual edits in LR, then used Film Noir filter in Silver Efex Pro2

[andrew_morton2]

Nothing crazy here:

• straightened the pole, my first observation
  
• brought up exposure +2EV to properly expose snow
  
• used the burn tool to bring down the sky exposure -.3
  
• warmed up the color temp a bit
  
• overall color saturation +10
  
• sharpening +30
  

[michaellinder]

Outstanding image for this week, Glenn! This version started with changing the crop to square in PSE15, followed by tonal and color adjustments (levels and hue/saturation filter, respectively). Then I used Output Sharpener for obvious purposes.

 

 

[billangel]

As the original poster said that there weren't any rules as to how the image might be manipulated, I utilized the Pixaloop App to animate the sky and also add a circling flock of birds. The Pixaloop App allows an animated image to be exported as a gif file, which can then be uploaded to photo.net.

[mpressionz]

I decided to add as much drama as possible for a west to east shot by using a linear gradient with emphasis on the clarity and contrast, as well as other tweaks with sharpness and dehazing. Luv the image too! Thanks Glenn, for the challenge.

[Leslie Reid]

Nice photo, Glenn!

As with last week’s image, I used this as an opportunity to try something I didn’t think I was going to be able to do.

 

In Lightroom I increased whites, shadows, texture, contrast, and vibrance, decreased highlights, then took it into Photoshop for the heavy lifting.

In Photoshop:

1. Used the magic wand selection tool to select the colors and tones in the power pole, thinking that would also select the powerlines.
   
2. Saved the selection to a new file, added a mask, and brushed out the by-catch to leave the power pole and a sorry representation of the powerlines, which, as it turns out, had largely evaded the selection.
   
3. Went back to the original, selected the upper third of the image, and saved it to a new file.
   
4. Used the magic wand tool to select the colors and tones in the power lines, added a mask, and brushed out the by-catch.
   
5. Added the powerline layer to the power-pole file and merged them, giving me a file with just the power pole and powerlines.
   
6. Added the power layer to the original file.
   
7. Enlarged the canvas and cloned in some extra head-room and a bit more room on the left side.
   
8. Distorted the power layer by enlarging it and skewing it to place the front pole off to the near left while leaving the right-hand ends of the power lines aimed at their original destination.
   
9. I healing-brushed out the original power pole and powerlines.
   
10. I thought I’d added a halo along high-contrast edges due to the way I’d done the selection, so I used a tiny clone brush to remove the halo. Turns out it was present on the original—sharpening artifact?
    
11. I also thought I’d vandalized the cross-arm strut on the powerpole due to an inept selection, so I gratuitously repaired that, too.
    
12. Did some clone repairs to the powerlines
    

Then back to Lightroom for some adjustment brushing and gradients:

1. In the background and lower clouds: increased warmth, contrast, and vibrance
   
2. On the road: increased exposure, and slightly warmed the right-facing sides of the ruts.
   
3. In the sky, reduced exposure in the upper right corner
   
4. From near-ground to horizon, Increased exposure slightly
   
5. Added gradient to reduce black point and add texture and clarity to near-ground.
   
6. Added gradient to increase contrast and reduce black point and texture in the sky.
   
7. I never add vignettes. I added a vignette.
   
8. I spent some time trying to figure out why the right-hand footprints suddenly ended, then realized that this fits the definition of a distraction, so I cloned in an extra footprint.
   

[tom_r]

This one is strange, even for me. It's supposed to be a little symbolic and even inspired by a movie--either that or I'm way overdue to go to sleep.

Many applications of texture and overlays, with a few luts to get the color and atmosphere.

[mikemorrell]

Just a general 'wash and brush-up' from me. Whenever I see lots of footprints in otherwise pristine snow. I'm tempted to remove at least some of the footprints. So I've tried to give the impression of a solitary walker with solitary footprints. In my imagination, the dog, of course was happily bounding around off- track up until the shot was taken ;).

I guess I changed the time of day too by making the snow brighter and reducing the 'blue cast'. I cropped the photo to 3:4 too just to bring the walker/dog a bit closer. When uploading, I just noticed that I forgot to soften the edges and adjust the color of my 'snow patch'. I could correct it but I don't want to spend any more time on it.

I like @Leslie Reid's detailed comment and I'm looking forward to reviewing his steps in Lightroom !

Edited April 26, 2020 by mikemorrell

[Glenn McCreery]

Lesdlie - You did a lot of work on the image. You stated, "I thought I’d added a halo along high-contrast edges due to the way I’d done the selection, so I used a tiny clone brush to remove the halo. Turns out it was present on the original—sharpening artifact?". This might be due to reducing the image size before posting in Photoshop with "Bicubic sharper" selected?. Something that I never noticed before you mentioned it.

 

I also never noticed, "why the right-hand footprints suddenly ended"? . Probably either I or she suddenly stepped to the side or took a big step forward - the trail is rather uneven. One of those cosmic mysteries that will remain forever unanswered. Mike also took care of the missing footprint, by eliminating it entirely!

 

Billangel - Thanks for introducing me to the Pixaloop App. I need to look into it.

[Leslie Reid]

I just couldn't pass up doing a second version in honor of PuntaColorada (Punta--did you find a way to get your computer repaired?).

This was a quick Photoshop excursion to add the "local color" on a new layer, distort it slightly to get the perspective right, and flip it. Then to Lightroom to add the shading.

[PuntaColorada]

I just couldn't pass up doing a second version in honor of PuntaColorada (Punta--did you find a way to get your computer repaired?).

This was a quick Photoshop excursion to add the "local color" on a new layer, distort it slightly to get the perspective right, and flip it. Then to Lightroom to add the shading.

[ATTACH=full]1339163[/ATTACH]

Leslie, yes I did! As of this morning, I am running my iMac from an external drive (4TB 5400rpm Toshiba via USB 3). The internal 3TB fusion drive is kaput, but I did get about 5 years out of it. So far, no noticeable performance hit except at startup when I think the iMac tries to mount the dead drive and repair it. Makes me wonder what the benefit of fusion drives are.

Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday I'll give a shot at responding to Glenn's challenge.

Thank you very much for asking.

Estoy muy feliz:):):):)!

[PuntaColorada]

Thank you Glenn for allowing us to work on this lovely image.

 

I thought I'd try removing the power lines and poles. This hit me as kind of ironic when I zoomed in and saw that the objects on the right side of the image are windmills.

 

All was done in PS.

 

As Glenn mentioned, the jpeg compression makes halos around things like power lines. I thought I'd try a different method rather than healing brush, cloning, etc. to get rid of the power lines and their halos.

 

I duplicated the background layer twice (because the lowest layer remains as the background layer) and put a mask on the upper layer.

I hid the bottom layers and painted in black on the mask using a fairly wide (relative to the power lines) and feathered brush to hide the power lines.

Then I made the second layer visible again and used the move tool on it to bring the sky into the masked parts of the layer above.

Because the lines are not straight nor parallel, some parts of lines remained visible so I merged the upper 2 layers, duplicated the background layer, masked the upper layer and repeated the process.

After that, with my sloppy mask drawings and funky layer layer moves, the lines were roughly dealt with.

With the big pole, I worked on the top part (with the sky as a background). The select object tool picked it out well. I expanded the selection and then used content aware fill.

The bottom pole was dealt with by making a selection bigger than it and then using content aware fill.

The little poles were dealt with using the healing brush.

There was still quite a bit of clone stamping, patching and healing brush work to do, but that was to be expected.

I increased the saturation of the image using a preset in a selective colour adjustment layer (thanks to PiXimperfect for teaching me that).

Then I used a curves adjustment to boost the highlights and bring down both the mid tones and the darks. That made it look like what I recalled of that time of day in Canada.

 

Of course, I had to add some ham. I expanded the canvas by 110% and put in a drop shadow. That was the ham, this description is the cheese. My hard drive failure left me in a pickle, I guess.

 

Once again, Glenn, thanx. This was fun.

Edited April 27, 2020 by PuntaColorada

[igord]

Basic channel contrast.