Post Processing Challenge August 27, 2022

[Glenn McCreery]

Let's have fun while we learn (and show) how we use our imagination, creativity and skills in post-processing.

 

There are no rules or guidelines: your post-processed images can be 'adjustments' that you think improve the image or 'wildly creative' interpretations. Entirely up to you. Please summarize your PP so we can all learn from each other.

 

If you would like to post a PP challenge next week (or any other week!), please do! Any Photos/Images can be posted for PP challenges. They should be of sufficiently high resolution, for example, 3000 px on the long side.

[mikemorrell]

Levels, PS neural filter '(painting) style transfer', mostly removed in sky, 35% multiply layer with gradient mask to darken the foreground.

 

[michaellinder]

PSE2020 - Crystalized, levels. Color Efex - detail extractor, Indian Summer filter

 

 

 

[tom_r]

[tom_r]

I started listing retouching steps I had taken for this latest challenge, but then I stopped and wondered if there were anyone out there in the great beyond who actually reads these edit notes and finds them useful?

[Leslie Reid]

I personally like listing the steps because it makes me think very critically about what I did, and I learn a lot from that. I've also picked up some useful tricks from others' notes in the past.

 

In Lightroom, I selected the sky and increased clarity, texture, contrast, dehaze, and reduced black point and shadows, playing around with different balances of each to bring out the mountains (which conveniently had self-selected with the sky) while leaving the sky with a natural look. I used a brush to increase warmth and clarity in the foreground, then did some global adjustments to reduce highlights, increase whites, and increase texture. I liked the fence at the bottom of the frame, so tried to make it look in-focus by using a brush to increase clarity, sharpness, contrast, and darken it, but it wasn’t successful so I regretfully let it go.

 

At that point I decided to hone in on the relation between the house and the mountains, so I cropped. Once cropped, the mid-ground distractions were more apparent, so I went to Photoshop and cloned out powerlines, anything orange, and most of the downed tree.

[tom_r]

Leslie,

Thank you for addressing my question, and for your detailed steps.

[tom_r]

Here I'm experimenting with the free plugin G'MIC and decided on a version derived from adjustments to the Artistic > Brushify selection.

[john_wheeler6]

I decided to crop, shift the left portion of image to the right and blend in with a Layer Mask. Made both Layers a Smart Object for some tonal adjustments and a linear gradient adjustment to bring out the mountains a bit. The fence in front was too much of a distraction for me so cropped to exclude it. Just some quick edits and hope you like my rendition. Edited September 2, 2022 by john_wheeler|6

[igord]

A green channel mixed in plus curves and shadows/hilights in PS:

 

 

Levels/curves:

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by igord