What’s Your Preference?

Erik Kuipers · #1 (**permalink**) 09-27-2007, 09:35 AM

Well my first try here on before and after…. So start with the before shot of the Hatsheput Temple at the beginning of this year… It’s a very touristy place and you will always have people on the shots….

The great thing about the people around it is that you can really get a feeling of how huge the construction is… For that I would maybe let the people in…
But… I used the after shot as a cover of a photo book and we decided to clone everybody out and use some adjustment filters (color / hue / softness / sharpening and contrast) to come up with this.

So what do you think… It’s my first real cloning project…

Any tips and hints are welcome.....

wulf · #2 (**permalink**) 09-27-2007, 09:55 AM

Looking at the size of the pictures here, it certainly looks like you have manage to neatly remove all those pesky people

Did you just use one picture as the source? One technique for de-touristing ancient sites is to take a series of pictures from a fixed vantage point. Between them, you should be able to find any given spot of the background without people getting in the way. Even if you can clone most of the people out easily, it is a trick worth bearing in mind in case you get a tricky spot that is a struggle to get right.

Wulf

matthewchj · #3 (**permalink**) 09-27-2007, 12:11 PM

Whoa. Good job on the cloning. The picture looks much less cluttered now.

jiminyClickit · #4 (**permalink**) 09-27-2007, 12:25 PM

Erik Kuipers, Welcome

Certainly a time-consuming, patience-testing project! Only an enlarged view shows any signs of work having been done. To the left of the central stairs, where there was a slight halo on the vertical edge, lower part is now smooth. The stones of the courtyard under the man in red in foreground, are showing repeats. Neither of these takes away anything from the quality of work; just some things to watch for in your next edit work.

Over-exposed clouds could be replaced if you wanted to really improve overall look, and drop (rotate) right side down a degree or two to level it. On extreme right, is there much more to this structure? It seems cut off.

Chris....A.K.A....Shrek · #5 (**permalink**) 09-27-2007, 11:10 PM

I might be swimming against the current here but I liked the original. The people gave the image a sense of how big the temple actually is. Great shot either way though.

AshamedGorilla · #6 (**permalink**) 09-28-2007, 05:27 AM

I think that there should be a compromise. Remove most of the people in the froeground so you still have the people that are in the temple to show its size.

The color/contrast and cloning look great. But one small critique; There is a dark spot on the right rail of the stairs(about half-way up,) from comparing it to the original, it appears to bea shadow of the person in the red shirt.
It is still an AMAZING edit! How long did that take you?

Erik Kuipers · #7 (**permalink**) 09-28-2007, 07:12 AM

Thanks for all your ideas and tips... and this process took me about 2 hours so not that long...
And yes a compromise is the final edit of this shot... like I said I just use the without as a cover of my book.

Todd · #8 (**permalink**) 09-30-2007, 11:29 PM

doesnt that make you feel like a little alien zapping those people into the cyber trashcan........... Nice work looks fine in my eye

inkista · #9 (**permalink**) 10-01-2007, 12:17 AM

Amazing cloning job.

Just wanted to drop in a comment that another technique for getting a similar result is to slap an ND filter on the camera and do a really long exposure. Or to take three or four shots on a tripod, at, say, five second intervals, and then you should have enough "coverage" with Photoshop layers to erase anything that moved.