THE PP GAME!

Lightroom 5:

  • Apply lens profile
  • Remove CA
  • Hilight -35
  • Shadow +15
  • Sat +15R +10O +5Y
  • +10 clarity
  • Crop
  • straighten
  • vertical perspective correct

  • Export as 16bit TIFF

Photoshop CC:

  • Curves adjustent layer mask on sky to lower mid-highlights, but left highlight point top right
  • Adjustment layer mask for curves on foreground to lift base point of red and mid point lower of blue to add yellow
  • Paste in black and white copy with increased red, orange and yellow into a quick mask of the sky, then desaturate to 50%
  • Increase saturation of above layer mask.
  • Manual airbrushing of clouds using a small soft saturation brush and a Wacom Intuos 4 medium graphics tablet
  • Slight film grain mask added.
  • Remove annoying yellow sign
  • Convert to 8 bit
  • Convert to sRGB
  • Save as full res JPEG quality 12
  • Upload to Imgur

20 mins

Crit welcome.

Click for full res and click again for zoom (May not work on phones and tablets)
 
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Heres mine,

ACR

Add exposure
Add Contrast
Reduce highights
increase shadows
Add a little clarity
Add a little vibrance
Rotate and crop

open in PS

Add colour Grad Tint
Duplicate and overlay with soft light
Add Contrast and saturation to sky
Add an Adjustment layer for highlights and shadows, touch in some of the sky
sharpen




DSC-2354 by DP|_|Photography, on Flickr
 
Well done Graham great edit

For this one i really liked Lee's silhouette idea so I explored that idea .... very simple processing blew the sky, clipped the blacks a touch of clean up and cropped.

 
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This is mine..........

In ACR WB Temp 7500 0 Tint
Contrast -12 Highlights -28, Shadows -3, Whites +3, Blacks -29 and Clarity +38

In PS
Sharpened a bit then wondered what to do with the image. Couldn't think what to do and while I was having a cuppa the sky darkened and there was a rumble of thunder, Ah-ha! says I, lightning will work.
This is why this PP Game is fun and useful. I'd no idea how to create lightning so searched around for a tutorial and learnt how.
Basically it's using the gradient tool on a layer then rendering the result using the Difference clouds filter and squeezing the levels 'til you get left with a lightning bolt. Invert that and add colour then paste in as needed - blend mode - screen.
Oh, forgot, Used the gradient tool first to darken the sky.
Gradient tool - blend mode - multiply.
I ended up with 16 layers.
Added a couple of small explosions where the bolts struck earth (not entirely happy with them, another tutorial needed.)
Then decided some humanoid was required so put in Dick's John Deere. (this is where the TP swear filter comes into play, my mate's name isn't swishlingbong, it's Richard but it's shortened to Dick!:))


PPtes2t by Farmejim, on Flickr
 
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David thanks for the feedback as always it is appreciated.
Graham well done on your winning edit.

How many times have we seen the potential of a battery of pylons stretching across the landscape? Only to have our aspirations quenched when confronted with a less than inspiring image when it appears in the dev dish or in the RAW converter.

This image jumped out to my symmetry eye, as have other competition testers, to no avail I might add.
I always take note of technical and technique advice, but being one to follow my own artistic bent regardless of the scorn of others, I present yet another edit with a slant on symmetry.

Open in ACR, see screen grab.
Apply lens correction.

1140-1385129280-9b5e50c042bd4022fde2f4b2f7b1f6d8.jpg


My edit.


CLICK FOR FULL SIZE, CLICK AGAIN TO ZOOM.

Open in PS, make a copy.
Make a selection of the R/H side, copy and past into a new layer.
Edit-transform-flip horizontal, move to the left and line up with the R/H side of the original.
Flatten; Crop to loose the excess on the left and bottom.
SAVE.
Copy.
Select sky and then refine edge, feather by 150 pixels, in a levels adjustment layer, bring the L/H slider in to the point where the histogram starts to climb.
Deselect.
Add a curves adjustment layer and bring the curve line across to the start of the main histogram, mark a centre point on the line and adjust to give a slight “S” curve to increase the contrast.
SAVE.
Create a new layer, fill with 50% grey and set the blend mode to “Soft Light”.
Now using a soft low value round brush and with black as the foreground colour gradually burn the landscape to give it shape and form, swapping to white if a lighter tone suits.
On the background copy layer, use the spot healing brush to remove the dark patches in the foreground.
Use the dodge tool to bring the pylons into more of a silhouette.
Flatten; select all and use stroke to create the border.
SAVE.
Save for web.

Rhodese.
 
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quick one from me
auto raw
then clarity +100
vibe +51
sat +38
sharpen
done


fields of barley by flying giraffe, on Flickr

also anyone fancy taking part in the secret santa as per my sig?, done it for the last 2 years and its really nice, wonder what John would send me........
 
Flying giraffe said:
also anyone fancy taking part in the secret santa as per my sig?, done it for the last 2 years and its really nice, wonder what John would send me........
Click to expand...

John who - :thinking:
 
Thanks to you all, nice to see some creative ideas coming from this one. I really wanted something to be in the sky - which is I think where I was going wrong - trying to find something that wasn't there....

until Lee (solo man) posted up. Super dramatic colours there - not sure it was like that that evening, but I like it. :thumbs:

Darren - no problems with this one either - looks like it was a really simple edit too. Great result. Colours could take a boost for me. comes over a bit washed out maybe.

David - what can I say - nothing that I can pick on with the edit... foreground grass has a lovely colour to it. And teh pinkyness to the sky is how I remember it!

Deno.. I thought your edit of the last Pier scene was really good, this one lacking a bit of colour or drama in the sky for me.

Shaun - cracking creative take on the shot - loosing all the colours and trees has really drawn out the shapes of the pylons. Like it :thumbs:

Jim, oh Jim, where were you when the "other thread" was quietly withering away, good compositing and I had a good chuckle at the TP swear filters work!

Rhodese - I would like a bit more oomph in the sky, afraid the symmetry doesn't work for me as it comes across as a mirrored image, rather than a naturally symmetrical one. Can't fault the execution though.

Neil - a bit too much yellow in the foreground, and lacking oomph in the sky again I'm afraid.

I can get it down to a final 3...
Lee's dramatic fiery sky
Davids perfect but safe edit
and Shauns striking black on white creative take.

Here's my original edit, back in March this year.... Was two exposures, one for the sky, and one for the foreground crudely merged. :eek: With noise in the sky and halo's round the wires too.



And here's where I got it to this time, still not happy with teh sky though!
A fair bit of work with shadows and highlights, and saturation and vibrance for the sky and foreground seperately...




Oh - still need to pick my winner - hmmm, on this occasion,. I'm going to plump for Lee's fiery dramatic sky, don;t know how you pulled all those colours out but I really like the end result. Even though its far removed from the original, sometimes a bit of creativity is what's required. Nice strong crop brings the silhouetted pylons out nicely too. :thumbs:

Well done Lee. :clap:
 
well done Lee good to see something more daring :clap:

Graham sorry I never entered but have been really busy doing the 380 wedding photos I mentioned a while back. I am well overdosed on PP'ing for the moment :gag:
 
Congrats Lee... post up another :)
 
Thanks for the critique/feedback Graham :thumbs:
Well done Lee, a well deserved win:clap: Looking forward to the next game.
 
Well done Lee.
Cheers Graham.

Jim, if you had given us the red night sky. It would have been a Shepherds delight. :exit::runaway:
 
Thanks Graham for choosing my edit......glad you liked it....an image I always wanted to get, a row of pylons against a red sky
And thanks to everyone else for the congrats...

It's been such a long time since I've actually won, that I've forgotten how to do this, so hope it works.

Anyway...this was taken back in January, I do smile at how little I knew then!...and not sure I have an edit for this.





Link to the RAW file here https://www.dropbox.com/s/auah287g5h4w6gv/IMG_1019.CR2
 
Someone has to be first, it may as well be me. :)

Open in ACR, auto, open in PS.
Straiten up. Crop.
Levels and saturation.
Loads and loads and loads of cloning and and and loads more cloning, content aware, and some more cloning spot healing “oh” did I mention some cloning, but I left the gull, I couldn’t be bothered.:lol:

Time taken ages.


CLICK FOR FULL SIZE, CLICK AGAIN TO ZOOM.

Rhodese.
 
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straighten slightly
auto settings
clarity increased
highlights decreased to bring out the sky
sharpen
topaz hdr filter
done
 
Heres mine.

Thought I would try something a little different

Edited In Paintshop Pro X5
Brightened
Sharpened
Applied Infrared Film affect
Cleared noise
Saved.

Was going to try and clone out steel fencing etc but I have 600 photos from my trip to London today to go through and sort.


The PP Game Edit 3 by DazJamesPhotography, on Flickr
 
Looks like I wasn't the only one that thought IR then.... except I thought Kodak High Speed Colour Infra Red woudl be more suitable.

LR5:
  • Highlight -35
  • Shadow +15
  • apply lens profile
  • correct verticals
  • remove CA
  • +10 clarity
  • export as 16bit TIFF

PS CC:

  • Convert to CMYK
  • select yellow channel
  • copy yellow channel
  • select magenta channel
  • Paste yellow channel onto magenta channel
  • saturation layer to increase red and magenta
  • history brush building back to convert CMYK history state
  • levels
  • curves
  • create new empty layer
  • fill with mid grey
  • Add noise for film grain
  • select overlay channel mix
  • blur new layer using Gaussian blur
  • fade Gaussian blur -65%
  • Flatten layers
  • remove scaffolding
  • convert to RGB
  • Convert to 8bit
  • apply sRGB
  • Save as JPEG

Click for big... click again to zoom (may not work on phones and tablets)


[edit]

Sorry.. not sure how long it took.. stopped for dinner, then watched Dr Who.... probably 25 mins or so.
 
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Some interesting edits..... I'll probably call this tomorrow evening, then again, it might be afternoon instead :lol:
 
Merged 3 exposures in SNS-HDR
Contrast and micro-contrast sliders quite high
Had B&W in mind so wasn;t too worried about introducing noise

PS
Cloned the bin, and the more prominent fences (and the gull atop the tower)
Lens correction, barrel and vertical perspective
Cloned in lower right corner
B&W conversion with Channel Mixer

Picasa :eek:
Soften
Crop off the bottom
Vignette
1960's effect filter :eek:

 
Oh no, not the gull......

Rhodese.
 
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Here's my take on it...............why didn't you shoot this when there was no scaffolding Lee? Ha-ha :):)

Start with ACR
Screenshot
View attachment 1417
Then opened in PS.
Spent some time with clone stamp and spot healing tool to remove scaffolding!
Straightened a bit then used lens correction for converging verticals.
Added monks since it's an abbey!
Sharpened a bit
Converted to B&W ...screenshot
View attachment 1418
Highlights and shadows slider to give some extra contrast.
Got rid of some of the noise I'd introduced with my meddling:)


IMG_1019 by Farmejim, on Flickr
 
Just a complete random fiddle with sliders in LR but I chose not to just do minor tweaks as I'm not keen on the colours of the Abbey in real life - only about 15 minutes from me (no reflection of the actual piccy).

Steps as screen grabs below with a tiny vignette & quite a lot of sharpening.

20 minutes.



 
LOL @Farmerjim

I thought.... "Oh... a straight, non comical edit... that's a change"... then noticed the jolly roger.. :)
 
Pookeyhead said:
LOL @Farmerjim

I thought.... "Oh... a straight, non comical edit... that's a change"... then noticed the jolly roger.. :)
Click to expand...

There's me laughing at the monks & not seeing the Jolly Roger.

Mind you red grass & David is a combination I never thought I'd see ;)
 
Pookeyhead said:
LOL @Farmerjim

I thought.... "Oh... a straight, non comical edit... that's a change"... then noticed the jolly roger.. :)
Click to expand...

Sorry, it's not meant to be comical, it's a religious thing. I'm a member of the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster and as we venerate pirates, a pirate flag is often flown.
 
Jim Just arranged for two men, in white coats, in a white van, to come along, to your house, & take you where you can be amongst 'like minded' people :rolleyes:
 
Ok, I'm calling this now, it's close enough to the afternoon.....so thanks to everyone for the interesting edits....
As for my own edit(which I hadn't done), I've only just figured out that once I put the image in dropbox, it's no longer in my folders to be edited doh!, if I get time later I'll do one...

Ok, so.....
Rhodese....really good edit,and you did well to retain the colour of the Abbey, it's very easy to overdo it, and I was impressed with the amount of 'clutter removal' you did.... the grass though may be a little too saturated for me, and I'm not keen on the border though.

Flying giraffe..... hdr, I didn't think it would work, but...I like it..... it's a nice bright image, the tree looks great, the grass looks like it's got a touch of frost on it....it works really well for me, I'd have liked to have seen a little more 'yellow' in the sand stone...but a great edit.

Proud2btaff... another interesting edit.....Looks better against the black background of Flickr, for my taste though, I'd have liked to have seen more contrast in it especially in the different tones in the stonework of the Abbey..

Pookeyhead.... an unusual edit.... one I wouldn't have thought to try, I'd read your 'edit list' to understand how you got your channel swapping.... but I'm still on the fence on this, so feel I can't critique it too much as I don't know whether I like it or not, or, if it's just because it is very different and it needs to grow on me, technically I can't fault it.....however, I can say what I don't like.... I see you added film grain, and, having switched to film recently, I know I really dislike grainy images lol.

Overbez.... it defintely has a 60's feel to the image, kind of a 'haunted house' look ... but I'm not sure it works for me.

Farmerjim.... another good edit.... made me smile, I'm not sure about the added flag though... I like that you also opted to tidy the image up, and I like that you converted it to black and white....The inclusion of the monks, well,in this instance it doesn't work for me only because the monks at the Abbey are always dressed in black....but a good idea and a good edit all the same.

DayDreamer.... I'm even closer to the Abbey than you, and I have yet to see it without a fence panel, or scaffolding of some sort around it... however, I really like the warm rich colours of the Abbey especially in full sun, so unfortunately your edit here doesn't work for me ....

So... the winner... for me it's Rhodese, aside from the border it is the edit that has retained the colours of the Abbey and Monastry and the fact that you took the time to remove all the clutter.
Farmerjim comes a very close second.... I really like the black and white edit, I like the fact you added the monks(if only you'd dressed them in black though).

So, thanks to everyone for taking the time to put up their edits....a few of which I'm going to try myself.

Over to you Rhodese :thumbs:
 
Gosh, thanks Lee.
I know we always say this sort of thing when a win comes our way, but “I really wasn’t expecting it.” :ty:
I thought ,even without “The Gull“ ;), Graham’s was a standout edit, David’s was so unusual. Then there was Jim’s, so… well what can one say about “Jolly Rogers” at full mast :lol: and a cracking edit to boot.

Now the scrat begins for an image that has promise, interest and novelty, that doesn’t make me look like a knob for not binning it in the first place.
This one was taken at Boscastle. They were rebuilding the riverbank after those terrible flash floods.
I waited ages, for the dog to look at the men or a man to look at the dog, it never happened, in the end I just took a couple of shots and moved on.

The best of editing, good luck.

I’ll call it late on Saturday morning.

1208-1385559219-478d5bf8338b2ee985336b353a194009.jpg


RAW....https://www.dropbox.com/s/stv5uwh315ns3ca/THE WHITE HAT RAW.NEF

Rhodese.
 
overbez said:
Well done Rhodese, the newly proclaimed "King of clone". :clap:
Click to expand...

Cheers Graham, I don’t know about “King of Clone.”

Clowns more like, have you looked close at the down pipes and windows. :gag: :runaway:

Rhodese.
 
Rhodese said:
Cheers Graham, I don’t know about “King of Clone.”

Clowns more like, have you looked close at the down pipes and windows. :gag: :runaway:

Rhodese.
Click to expand...

Don't worry Rhodese, I looked closely at everyone's edit, I checked sharpness, noise/grain, whether the verticals were corrected, and I had noticed that there were some odd bits about the building in your edit.....and, for sure others had cleaner edits....and some edits were most unusual...
However, as everyone did pretty much a different edit....in this instance I went for the whole package... and yours is how the Abbey looks:thumbs:
 
Congrats Rhodese:clap:
Thanks for the critique Lee, I thought that they were white monks there :confused: , I'm not very well read when it comes to monks and their funny habits:)
 
Stared at this one for a while, and had no idea what to do with it. I've just gone for the best quality edit I can get.

LR5:
Crop left side
apply CA removal
Apply lens profile
Increased exposure, as it was under
Slight sharpen as it seemed slightly soft
slight highlight recovery
+5 clarity
+15 shadows to lift teh dog a bit
Slight s-curve
Desaturated a little as the colours (especially greens) seemed a bit harsh.
convert to 8 bit
sRGB
JPEG save


Click for big etc.
 
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Opened in lightzone

upped contrast
lifted shadows
increase local contrast
made three copies with varying levels of saturation / vibrance and luminosity
one for the jackets (sunglasses on chaps!!)
one for general
and one for the browns of the rocks
oh - and a B&W one

opened
all in PS
masked through the jackets, helmets, rock colour from appropriate layer
overlaid with general and B&W layer
faded opacities to suit.
Cloned the bottle coming out the chaps behind!! :lol:
cloned the top line, and one rock in the earth to right of first bloke.

 
Done in Lightroom 4
I opted to get rid of distractions, so, I rotated and cropped.... and sharpened slightly.
I increased the tint and decreased the temp slightly.
I increased exposure. shadows and whites, and decreased blacks.
I decreased vibrance and saturation.
I adjusted the curves...
In the sliders, I increased orange, yellow saturation, and decreased blue, and the luminance slider I increased orange, yellow, green, aqua and blue.
Using the adjustment brush, I selectively saturated, did some selective burning, and lots of contrast....

11099213943_2b5f5a09f8_h.jpg
 
Here's my take on the given sample.............

Now I know I've been sailing a bit close to the wind on these tests, I have read the rules and understand that it's a game to improve PP skills and show what possibilities there are for a given image. I know I've broken the rules in the past by sticking in objects that really shouldn't or couldn't be there. If I overstep the mark and start spoiling the game, please tell me.
Having said that, on to the work in hand.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.....er, sorry that's in a film............ what we have here is three men looking into a hole. Nothing much to do in terms of standard PP work, the LB is OK, exposure OK, sharp enough and no bad noise issues.
I looked at this and thought, "what can I do?" No idea. "What are they looking at?" So I decided to invent something and get rid of the earth bank.

Opened with ACR
screen-grab..........
View attachment 1521


I selected the earth wall (but not the rock) deleted it and pasted in a shot of mine taken in the Alps.
Now the men are looking over a cliff face so needed to give a centre of attraction so stuck in a mountain goat.
Cloned out bits of string and rope.
Sharpened a little and reduced noise (in my Alps layer)
Gave dog a bone.


THE WHITE HAT RAW by Farmejim, on Flickr

Thanks for letting me play!
 
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