What would you do (#3)

[Nicole]

Before I start out the thread this week, I'm putting out a call for people who want their pictures to appear in one of these threads. If you want to have a picture in our weekly edit thread, please PM me a link to a medium and large size of the picture. Come on guys, if you want this thread again next week, I'm gonna need another shot to post Ok. Now, on to the thread:

Well, this week, we have a picture from our top poster, JiminyClickit.



Large: Available here

Once you've done your edits on the picture, come back and post it in this thread, and give us and explanation of what you've done. I'm looking forward to seeing what this week brings! Come on, impress me

[Tiberius]

First, I brightened the image by duplicating the layer and setting the blend mode to screen. I did this seven times and merged the layers. This fixed the exposure, but it left the flowers over exposed. To repair that, I went into shadows/highlights and set the shadows slider to zero and the highlights slider to maximum, reducing the exposure for the highlights and pulling a bit more detail back into what had become blown out. Then I created a selective colour adjustment layer to bring out the colour of the bee. However, this changed the colour of the plants as well, so I created a layer make to limit the effects. Then, deciding that the bee was a little too dark, I duplicated the background layer and used levels to make it brighter. Then I created a layer mask and copied the layer mask from the selective colour layer onto the new layer mask.

Oh, and I cropped it too.

[evran]

Editied in PS CS3
- Reduced size to 50% + crop
- Brightened the flowers first using: curves & increasing the exposure
- Lowered the gamma so the flower area would "pop"out more
- Adjusted a color balance layer to make flowers "pop" out even more
- Blurred background
- Masked the flower areas
- Added gradients in lighten mode to shade out the darker areas
- Lowered saturation & set to soft light to darken the background
- More gradient layers (in lighten mode) to soften the dark background
- Added border + type block
- Added type
- Sharpened

[hitkaiser]

Cropped
Levels - to make things brighter
Curves - to increase contrast
Noiseaware - remove nosie
UnsharpMask
Increase saturation

I think that's it..

[Tiberius]

Evran, yours would look incredible if you brought out the bee as well as the flowers and had them both on the dark background.

[xxpinballxx]

okay I took the bee out and adjusted te saturation hue and contrast.
Took the flower out and did the same.
Then i took the saturation down to get rid of any color.
Merged the layers and then cloned out the wandering pedals of the flower.
Was a quick ten minute job but here it is......

[blzrd]

Originally Posted by xxpinballxx

okay I took the bee out and adjusted te saturation hue and contrast.
Took the flower out and did the same.
Then i took the saturation down to get rid of any color.
Merged the layers and then cloned out the wandering pedals of the flower.
Was a quick ten minute job but here it is......

I absolutely love the tint of the flowers on this crop.

[jiminyClickit]

Great to see a challenge met, and I'm not surprised to see the successful results so far. My goal when first trying to get something out of this was to keep the wing-motion highlights (it was the first I'd ever gotten in any insect - first bee shot actually, a fluke while doing blooms).

This is good work. As Nicole says, she needs more photos for the next weeks' challenges. Find a real stinker and PM Nicole, so the thread goes on!

[Teewinot]

I didn't have a 'vision' going into this one, so I more or less experimented with different effects and until I found some that I liked.



What I did:
1. I cropped quite a bit. I didn't like the distracting branches in the background, plus I sort of didn't want to keep the bee because I'm not a fan of them.
2. I brightened the shot a lot (curves).
3. I duplicated the layer, did a gaussian blur followed by a color mode blend.
4. I flattened the 2 layers and desaturated.
5. I then cloned/painted out the leaf--quite tricky! I did the best I could.
6. Next I cloned/painted out all the background.
7. I played a bit more with contrast/brightness.
8. Finally I decided to add the borders to complement the B&W within the photo.

I'm mostly pleased with the results. And it was a learning experience so that's all that matters.

[Teewinot]

Originally Posted by jiminyClickit

My goal when first trying to get something out of this was to keep the wing-motion highlights (it was the first I'd ever gotten in any insect - first bee shot actually, a fluke while doing blooms).

Haha...and that's what I ended up getting rid of...well I did like the wings, but again, I'm not a big fan of bees. My husband is with everyone else. He thinks I should have left the bee in.