Digital surgery

[L.Wayne]

I suppose I have spared forum goers from my meager efforts long enough. This rather blah photo was taken on the spur of the moment as my son and his family were getting ready to leave. I hate almost everything about it. Add to the obvious that the diopter was not adjusted to my newest prescription specs and this is the result. Later my son requested a copy to use for Christmas cards this year, so I had to perform major surgery to obtain a worthy image.




From the 10 shots in the set I grabbed a few smiles for mom and the little one, then rebuilt the fireplace for desired atmosphere and to eliminate distractions. The color enhancement was obtained via four different layers, one for each color to eliminate overlap and interference. I believe I almost ended up with the shot I should have been able to capture at the moment. Although I am still not 100% satisfied, I had to sew it up before the artifacts became unbearable.




Digital imaging rocks!

[DigitalCamerasAustralia]

Great job! That's a cute kid.

[Dirt_Bike_Ryda]

i love what you have with what you had. great job

[Eberbachl]

Nice job!

IMHO maybe a touch overboard on the vignette, but otherwise, great work.

[gh patriot]

Nice save. The vignette makes a world of difference in the photo.

[wulf]

Very impressive, certainly at this size. I think your daughter-in-law's smile is the best part of the save.

Wulf

[L.Wayne]

Thanks for the comments folks. I hope to become as good a photographer as I am an image manipulator. Until recently I worked with an advertising firm, doing image work for commercial catalogs. I use an older program and am only now making the switch to Photoshop. (Which is kicking my butt at the moment.) Photoshop has become the industry standard, and everywhere I apply uses Photoshop CS2 or higher. The biggest difference appears to be layering as opposed to objects which are manipulated live within the working image, giving real time feedback as the work progresses. In comparison the layering system sometimes gives me the feeling of working blind.

For the images above I made my adjustments in Raw 5.0, using multiple saves to create a new image for each effect I was after. The raw images are then cropped down to only the portion I intend to use, to be later imported into the working image as needed. This method seems to give the best results with larger images where detail is critical and artifacts more readily noticeable.