THE PP GAME!

Excellent, thanks a lot. It's a lot more subtle and much less pixelated than what I was doing. Will try some of the above- do have some old film stuff so I should really dig it out- a topcon and minolta somewhere
 
Well done Nick :banana:Thanks for the f/b and critique David.
On to the next challenge.........................
 
Cheers David. (y).

Well done Nick. Ava :jaffa: :).

Ar well I'm a bridesmaid again, never mind ay, onward and upwards as "they" say. ( Who the **** are "They".) :);).

Dr_O said:
Very creative Rhodese(y)
Click to expand...

Cheer Doc.
My first thoughts when seeing “THE SKULL” was the crystal skull. I did it after the way of the background skulls, but to my eyes on its own it had little impact.


Rhodese.
 
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Doc,
If it’s of any help, I had/have some mono “Film grain” scans from Digital Photo, issued in June, 2006 issue 79.
They are for personal use and not for redistribution, so much as I would like to, I’m not going to offer them, but if you go to the magazine site they maybe available on back issue.

Back Issues

Call: 0844 848 8872
Overseas: +44 (0) 1858 438866
Email: bauer@subscription.co.uk

Rhodese.
 
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Well done Nick :)

Pookeyhead said:
OK... well well well.... I very diverse bunch of stuff!

  • Paul: Very dark and very yellow here. Was that your intention? You've reduced exposure my almost a stop. Certain aspects of the workflow are confusing too. +35 green, and +66 magenta. Green is the opposite of magenta, so it would have been easier to dial in +31 magenta. Removing the detail in the black cloth is working well though.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the crit as always David. I was trying to create an old/antique type feel, I've seen bones go yellowish with age, I also had in mind it being lit with a candle (hence quite dark) so tried for that. I didn't like the look of the fabric so just made that black. If I had the skills with PS I would have tried either to add a cigarrette in an ashtray (centre left bottom) and smoke drifting across the skull, or gone for a terminator look, but none of my efforts were anything other than rubbish!
 
Cheers David. (y)

Pookeyhead said:
but I think for impact, simplicity and efficiency of workflow, and overall evilness of the skull... I'm giving this to Nick.. Blank_Canvas.

Put up a RAW :)
Click to expand...

Hi Nick :wave: @Blank_Canvas , you know you won this round right?

.
 
Rhodese said:
Cheers David. (y).

Well done Nick. Ava :jaffa: :).

Ar well I'm a bridesmaid again, never mind ay, onward and upwards as "they" say. ( Who the **** are "They".) :);).



Cheer Doc.
My first thoughts when seeing “THE SKULL” was the crystal skull. I did it after the way of the background skulls, but to my eyes on its own it had little impact.


Rhodese.
Click to expand...

Wow, thank you !

Thank you too David, I didn't really expect to get anywhere with this. Good feedback too, I'll take this onboard and learn from it.

As a consequence, I am unprepared to post an image this week and am away from home until after the week. It was a close call, would you be prepared to pick up the mantle and post an image to keep this going ?

If not, I guess we need to ping this back to David (Pookyhead)

Many thanks,

Nick
 
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Mornin all,
I couldn’t sleep thinking about this thread and what would happen if Nick had done a bunk. :).
Nar only joking, ;) I had to get up early for an oxpickle appointment.

David can you put another challenge up? I know the rules say it should be me but it doesn’t feel right, so if you don’t mind could you put your random number thingamebob back to work.
Cheers.

“I’ll be back.”

Rhodese.
 
I can do if you don't want to put one up.

The random hand of fate turned in 4990... which resulted in.....

FpxxuMi.jpg


Make of that what you will :)

14bit RAW

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23953768/_DSC4990.NEF


Have fun.
 
Thanks Rhodese, missed your post the other day.

David, appreciate you posting again, very good of you. Call Monday or other?

No prizes anyone for guessing what I'm going to do:p:D
 
Yeah... call it Monday :)
 


Haha- fooled you all:p

Ok,

Opened in LR,
Increased clarity to 12
Increased red saturation to 47
Sharpened to 30
Grain:D, amount 25, size 20 and roughness 51. Still experimenting here a bit
Painted some contrast +40 on two nearest trees and hen

In PS
Cropped- not sure if you can crop in LR, only just starting to use in anger and still finding my way around

Did also run through some all B&W presets in LR after having finished- quite a few times it seems so when I came to look at what I did I had to Ctrl+Z quite a bit it's fair to say-oops:rolleyes::D

 
I’m back. :banana:.

Doc I hope you don’t think I’ve copied your edit, mine is quite similar. :).

Thanks for stepping in David. (y).

Now for this chuckaloo, :bat:.

Open in ACR, no adjustments, Open in PS, CC.
Crop.
Copy layer.
Remove the remainder of the birds on the right with content aware and the clone tool.

For what I had in mind, I needed to make a selection of the white bird this proved quite difficult.
Remembering a selection method gleaned from, I think it was the late Barrie Thomas. It involves inverting the image from which the selection is to be made.

This I did, making the selection easier, I used the quick selection tool going down to 1 pixel in places.
(For some reason refine edge isn’t working properly, it’s very clunky, the mask never completes, this never happened when using CS6?)

The selection made, I saved it and then copied and pasted it into a new layer. I switched this layer off.
I called this layer CHICKEN.
Deselect.

I now inverted the image bringing it back to its normal state.
Still on the background copy layer, a levels adjustment was made, bringing the left-hand slider in to just inside the histogram.

I loaded the saved selection and inverted it (all BUT the chicken is now selected).
I applied lens blur. (If the bird had been included, it would have a corona that would have shown around the bird in the pasted layer.)
Deselect.

I now added a layer mask, and made rectangular selection across the bottom of the image taking in half the chicken, the selection was feathered by 100 pixels and filled with black revealing the sharpness of the image below, the feathering making a gradual transition from sharp to out of focus.

Next, I switched the pasted CHICKEN layer on and applied a levels adjustment, bringing in both end sliders to just inside the histogram.
A little local sharpening was done around the eye and beak.
A little local blurring with the blur tool was done along the edge of the comb to soften it into the background.

Flatten.
Added a border using stroke.
SAVE.
Save for web.


CLICK THE IMAGE FOR A BIG CHICKEN.

Doc said.
"not sure if you can crop in LR, only just starting to use in anger and still finding my way around"
Snap I have only had it since Sunday, when I signed up for CC.



Rhodese.
 
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Rhodese- you have isolated the chicken much better than I did so not copying at all:)

As an aside- I'm now on a trial of CS6- I'm not yet convinced and really it's only because of newer raw files although I'm sure I can get around it if I stick with CS5. Liquify has less options than CS5. It's a bit darker overall too but is in keeping with LR so guess they are all like that. There's a content aware move tool now as well. So a few new things and slightly different feel which is probably made worse as I have customised my CS5 set up and the CS6 will be out of the box.
All the cloud stuff is not for me- I like tangible:D

Anyway, back to thread- lets see those chickens:)
 
Good morning Doc.
Doc you can alter the workspace appearance by …Edit-Preferences-Interface and pick the one you like, you can go right back to the early one if you like.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/workspace-basics.html

As regards “CC”, the devil drives and all that.
The “CS6” I was using was on my sons licence and when it had to go, I couldn’t afford £6/700 for my own copy.
At £8.87 pm, for a year’s subscription of the cloud, including Lightroom, all the help and tutorials plus other add-ons, it made sense.
The other option was Essentials, good as it is I don’t think it would have suited me.

Re Lightroom, I have a very long and arduous climb, with my ageing mentality things do not sink in as they once did. ;).

Rhodese.
 
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Here's my rendition.............
ACR open and here's the screen grab.... View attachment 9005

Then in PS I cloned out the other hens and cropped top left.
Selected the hen and decreased exposure a little to lighten the feathers then brightened the eye up a bit more.
Sharpened the bird 60%.
Cleaned up the stuff that looks like bird muck under the hen.
Added a fox in BG.
Resized for Flickr.
Cock-a-doodle-doooo!
 
haha, love the fox Jim- didn't spot it at first glance and all was looking normal:D
 
Rhodese said:
Good morning Doc.
Doc you can alter the workspace appearance by …Edit-Preferences-Interface and pick the one you like, you can go right back to the early one if you like.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/workspace-basics.html

As regards “CC”, the devil drives and all that.
The “CS6” I was using was on my sons licence and when it had to go, I couldn’t afford £6/700 for my own copy.
At £8.87 pm, for a year’s subscription of the cloud, including Lightroom, all the help and tutorials plus other add-ons, it made sense.
The other option was Essentials, good as it is I don’t think it would have suited me.

Re Lightroom, I have a very long and arduous climb, with my ageing mentality things do not sink in as they once did. ;).

Rhodese.
Click to expand...

Cheers, I'll see if I bother to customise or not. I haven't moved any of my brushes over yet either.

The upgrade for me will be £189 but I'm only doing it because CS5 ACR is no longer updated for new cameras- I could use converter though- and the camera I want isn't out yet so I may just wait. There's certainly nothing that has bowled me over in CS6
 
OK... call time...

All quite similar at first glance.

Dr_O:
Nice simple edit. Not sure this needed much doing to it that you've not already done. Good crop, contrast tones. Perhaps a little light in contrast, but not a major issue, and it's a personal thing anyway. The grain is subtle. Nice edit.

Rhodese:
All the same attributes as Dr_O, including the same crop, but the extra work in using lens blur has really brought the subject out more, and it's really well done indeed. A super edit. More aggressive contrast, bit still retains the contre jour feel.

Jim:
I'll not comment on the fox... :) The edit is really clean. Crop may be a little tight, but helped by removing the other white bird to let the image breathe. Sensible workflow.

only three entries, so judging is a little easier.. but also harder because all three are superb but I'm giving it to Rhodese. It just has punch and lovely deep blacks, but still retains a hint of hazy contre jour in the distance. Great crop, and great editing. It was a close call this one. I love Jim's.. even the fox I took seriously.. usually I just treat Jim's embellishments as a joke, and while done in that spirit I'm sure... actually works :) Dr_O's was uber simple and clean... but that depth of tone and sensitive contrast handling wins out for me.

Over to you Rhodese!

Post up a RAW.
 
Sorry, bit late to the party ... been a busy few days :)

Hope you don't mind me posting my edit, even though it has been called, I've only done a very simple edit.

Import into LR
Apply lens correction
Crop to 5:4 ratio
Global Adjustments:
Highlights -20
Blacks -50
Clarity + 15
Increased the saturation on red channel +50​
Adjustment brush over chicken/hen exposure + 2/3rds stop.

Export as sRGB, qual 75%, standard sharpening for screen

 
I'll follow PB and put up a late entry. I did this and wasn't really happy with it but didn't have time to go back for another go as I intended.

I first did a similar edit to the others but when I saw 2 similar ones already posted I thought I would try something different.

Edited in Lightzone
Firstly a square crop to focus on the main chicken and keep in the diagonal tree line.
Zonemapper to increase the range give a bit of general contrast.
Basic conversion to b&w
Sharpen on the face region
Relight tool on the body to use the detail slider to bring out contrast in the feathers.
A sharpen on the body to give a bit more texture.
Finally went back and boosted exposure a fraction.

 
Thanks David, I was conscious of trying not to make it look like digital noise:)

Well done Rhodese:clap:

Paul that's pretty similar to mine and worth posting, simple can be good:)

Bailout- I tried a variety of B&W presets after but good to see a B&W posted even after the event:D.

It was a good image to start with though so none of us could go far wrong although I'm sure I could have given it a good shot:p
 
Thanks for the f/b and critique David and well done Rhodese:banana:. Looking forward to the next test!:)
 
Cheers David and well done everybody, “You’ve all done very well.”(Now where did we hear that?)

I have been pretty much house bound over the winter but Friday last I went to a Queen Revival concert.
I struggle with SLRs so I took my relatively new Fuji X20; I have only used it once before though I had used an X10 previously.
So why am I rambling, well the jpegs from the little Xs are very good. So good in fact that my PP skills can’t better them when processing from the RAW.
It got to the point with the X10 that I just didn’t bother taking RAWs.
On Friday, I knew from experience of concerts that high ISOs would be the order of the day.
So I set the camera up before I left home. (My hands don’t work well with them fiddly little oowsits on cameras, especially in the dark.)
The ISO and shutter speed being my prime concern, I set the ISO to 3200 max on auto (I wouldn't be printing) and the shutter to a one 200th of a second reset to a 250th on site, the camera would be on a monopod, the aperture would look after itself. (Probably wide open.)
So off we went, I was about 30/50mts from the stage, when I was a young, virile and good looking, I would have got nearer to the stage to take advantage of the intensity of the light, that was then and this is now, ah well never mind ay.
I took jpegs and RAWs.

Here is a RAW from the set; I couldn’t better the jpegs from the camera.
I now have Lightroom and Photoshop, so a more detailed description of how you dealt with the noise “might” sway my thinking when it comes to the judging.

Off you go, good luck.

I will call it on Friday morning about 10am.

Jpeg of RAW.
3858-1396947730-abfc1a7df4289e7f434b8122c11e75c9.jpg


LINK TO RAW (I hope)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/43oyn7t2whs1ynu/DSCF0160.RAF

Rhodese.
 
Last edited:
Ok.. wasn't sure what to do with this one.

LR5
RA8qTbH.jpg


PS CC
hHe0XX3.jpg


 
David, what do you use to screen grab you settings?

This was interesting ... also didn't really know what to do with it, tried many things, in the end went for this!

Import into LR
Applied default level of CA removal
Clone out the two lights
Crop
Global: exposure +0.7, contrast -40, saturation -15
Sharpening: amount 100, radius 0.7, detail 20, masking 75
Noise reduction
Luminance 50, detail 30
Color 35, detail 35, smoothness 80​

Export as jpeg, qual 90, sRGB, sharpen for screen set to low.

 
BTW.. thats' real lens flare on my edit... not PS stuff :)

To screen grab, I just grabbed, scrolled... grabbed... scrolled etc. Then stitched them :)
 
just found this thread and thought i would give it a go seems as tho i have a new mac and lightroom 5 but didnt add what i did to the photo (sorry i will next time:()
main points i remember
B&W conversion
crop
play with the highlights and blacks
and a sharpen
and a quick removal of the lights
 
A two-hour stay and no stragglers so,

It looks like this one is not so popular, shame that, I hoped to glean a little about noise reduction.
I do have links to the lightroom online help and tutorials but there is nought like a bit of one to one.

David,
Your screen grabs go some way to aid my new venture into Lightroom.
The image, itself leaves me wanting, I like the flare (are they taken from past images of your own?)
The crop is too tight on the left for my liking.

Paul,
I would have liked more info on your noise control; the image has richness, which I like.

Nicholas,
Welcome, this thread has been a little quiet of late so new blood is welcome, most welcome.
I am a fan of mono and in the past, I have used it to hide noise, calling it grain.
It appears to be having that effect here.
Your crop has also given the subject the most space.

Well folks I am going to give it to Nicholas because, well just because.

Well done “nicholi”.

Nicholas Just in case you have not read the rules on page one, you now have to put one of your pictures up (preferably a RAW) for “PP”ing and the dreaded judging.
Give us a deadline, the time that you will be judging.

Good luck and it’s over to you.

Here’s mine, if I can call it that.
It is a jpeg SOOC, with the exceptions of cropping, cloning, and a little dodging on the stands.



CLIK FOR BIG AND BIGGER

Rhodese.
 
Well done Nicholas :)

Rhodese said:
...
Paul,
I would have liked more info on your noise control; the image has richness, which I like.
Click to expand...
Rhodese I thought this was a tricky one, so am pleased you liked the result. As for the noise reduction, I have posted the screen grab from LR to show the settings I used. I basically try and balance any additional sharpening with the amount of noise reduction. The beauty with LR is you can play around with the sliders whilst seeing what happens without worry of cocking up. With something like noise it is to me always a judgement call.
 
Ah b****r, oops my bad, forgot I hadn't done this. What I was going to do was some sort of Bohemian Rhapsody effect with the two heads. Not sure how well it would have worked but that was the plan I had planned before I forgot. Picture it anyway, probably looked pretty cool but not a winner:D

Anyway, well done Nicholas:clap:
 
Thanks for the grab Paul.

Doc, yer I believe ya, faarsands wouldn’t. “What I was going to do was“, ……as if. :):rolleyes:.

Rhodese.
 
well thank you. first post first win (nothing to do with me being new :whistle:) i have had a look at the rules now but I'm afraid you will all have to wait till morning for a picture when i can get to my camera
 
Rhodese said:
David,

I like the flare (are they taken from past images of your own?)
Click to expand...


I just took a shot of one of my flashguns going off and firing into the lens with the lights off at night. Then blended the layer using Screen.
 
It looks like I’m first in, so.

Open in ACR, auto, open in PS.
Make two copies. Resulting in Background, background copy and background copy 2.

Click on the Background copy layer and knock the opacity down to 25%.

On the Background copy 2 layer, go to-filter-blur-Average.
Add a layer mask by clicking on the third from the left icon at the bottom of the layers pallet. It looks like a white rectangle with a hole in it.
Picking up a 1000pixel, 100% soft round brush, Opacity and flow at 100%. Then with black as the foreground colour (Using the ghost of the dog in Background copy as a guide.). Place the brush over the dog’s nose. Click and start painting into the mask to reveal the image below, (The background layer). Make only small circular movements taking in the face and bib, and only letting the outer soft parts of the brush affect the edges of the dog.

SAVE.

When the face and bib are clear stop painting and move the brush over a paw, resize to the width of the paw and drop the opacity of the brush to 30%.
Painting from the outer edges of the dog, the edge of the brush never exceeding the edges of the dog, painting with inward moving strokes only and following the natural lie of the hair, build up the clarity of the rest of the dog.
Correct and mistakes by painting with white. ( Switch black to white, white to black with the”X” key.)

SAVE.

When the outline of the dog is apparent switch off the Background copy layer.

With things looking OK, make a new layer. (Click the icon third from the right at the bottom of the layers pallet; it looks like a sheet of paper with the corner turned up.)
It will automatically be named “Layer 1”
The new layer should appear between the Background copy and the Background copy 2.

Fill the layer with 50% grey and change the blend mode to soft light. (Fill is in the Edit dropdown.)

With the foreground set to black and the background set to white painting with a brush size of about 400 pixels (Resize the brush using the square bracket keys.) The opacity set to about 10%, flow at 100%, paint a shadow under the dog.
Still on “Layer 1”, drop the brush opacity to 5%, using white to dodge and black to burn, dodge and burn to shape the dog.

SAVE.

When it looks OK. On the Background layer quieten the sharpness of the nose with the blur tool and do a little local sharpening around the eye with the sharpen tool both set to around 15%.

When done, flatten.
Make the border using stroke.
SAVE.
Save for the web.


CLICKTHEIMAGE4THEBIGGESTLITTLEDOGINALLTHEWORLD.

Rhodese.

PS Nicholas "When are you going to call/judge it?"
 
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Rhodese that is quite a lot of work but i do like the end result and so does the other half. i will judge it using the same time frame as you and will call it tuesday at 1700 so if no one else joins in we will have a sure winner lol.
 
I created a psd on Sat but didn't have time to finish. Struggling to do much with the eyes- will locate and finish
 
Forgot to say, that's some workflow Rhodese- luckily for me I didn't do any of that so mine is quite short:p:D

OK, so found PSD- turned off duplicate background layer with 'eye' fix as decided it didn't look right.

Prior to that in ACR- increased contrast, sharpened and that was it. I have a feeling I may have increased or decreased the blacks- but it was on saturday and I now can't recall:oops: :$
In PS; duplicated layer and attempted some eye refinement which I have now abandoned
Cloned out other dog and would have cloned out blue thing but decided to crop instead as that was faster and the new framing didn't appear to hurt.
Job done:)

I did have an attempt at replacing the eyes completely on Sat with another terrier types:naughty:. However, the resolution from others was poor and as the wrong size the quality wasn't there to re-size and all the rest I could find were out of focus:rolleyes:

Edit101 by Dr_Ozone, on Flickr
 
Just noticed I've cropped a bit too high so shadow there- schoolboy error:rolleyes:
Was aware of clone line- that was hard to fix due to depth of field changes at that point- or that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it:p
 
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