What would you do (#4)

[Nicole]

It's that time of the week again, time for another What Would You Do project . Let me start out by thanking everyone who has sent me links to pictures that they want to have edited in this thread! You guys are great! All your photos will be used in time, so don't worry if you don't see it right away. As always, feel free to PM me with a photo that you would like to be used in this thread. And also, a big thanks to everyone who's been participating in these threads, I hope you've been finding it a helpful learning experience, because I've seen some great edits since these threads started.

This week, our picture comes from Teewinot.



Also available in large size

As usual, once you've done the edit, please post it back here with a description of what you've done in the editing process so we can all learn from what others do.

Don't forget to have fun, be creative, and show us what you would do!

[evran]

Sadly enough when nearing the completion of this my Photoshop crashed so I had to redo a lot of the process from when I last saved as a *.jpg so a lot of these processes below are out of memory and might not be 100% accurate

Edited in PS CS3

- Increased color in "lab color" mode + curves
- Went back to "RBG" mode
- Darkened photo w/ curves, levels and gamma adjustments
- Tinted the whole piece w/ a dark yellow + set on overlay w/ 30% opacity to give it a little retro feel
- Color balance based on cyans and blues
- Adjusted the selective "neutral" colors: cyan, yellow & black on relative method
- Increased exposure
- Lowered saturation
- Darkened a little more w/ curves
- Increased contrast slightly
- Toned down the red saturation & luminance
- Vignetted
- Type + widescreen border
- Sharpen

[Clusty]

Here's mine. All I did was use the Lomo effect.

[ELAY]

Hey Evran, that's the kind of thing I would have done -- but not so well!

I find these "What Would you do" threads about the most useful thing in these forums -- I learn both about what different kinds of things you can do to enhance a photo, and about how to go about it.

EL

[windrider86]

I cropped it down to keep the focus on the people and played with color levels a bit to bring out the different shades. Not real happy with the sky but I have to get my butt to work! Ph and by the way i am working in Corel Paint Shop Pro

[xxpinballxx]

Nice wind....I never would have thought to crop out the tree. If i would have done it this way I would have used the guy in red as an ouside edge looking into the frame. I like it.

[Teewinot]

The reason I submitted this shot for this thread was that I thought it might have potential, but I just couldn't get anything out of it in post processing. windrider86, your crop inspired me! So here's my finished product...still not the shot in my eyes, but better.



What I did:
-First I cropped in a similar fashion as windrider86 and used xxpinballxx's suggestion of having the 'guy in red' over on the left looking towards the rest of the frame (btw, the 'guy in red' is my hubby).
-Next I cloned out the shadow from the tree in the foreground, plus a couple of extraneous objects I couldn't identify. I also chose to clone out the branches in the upper right corner for reasons you will see later.
-Then I adjusted the midtones of the histogram, putting it at about -15 or so (increases contrast).
-I had to reduce the saturation a little because the clothing was getting a little too colorful.
-Then I duplicated the layer and applied a gaussian blur. I chose the 'Burn' blend mode at about 70%.
-Then I flattened the layers and reduced the saturation again a little.
-As others have pointed out, the sky in the original is pretty dull. It was a regular cloudy day in Iowa. I recently was practicing adding a new sky in a different thread and thought that perhaps I could try it here (the reason I cloned out the branches....it would have been really hard to get a new sky behind them!). So I selected everything but the sky and added a mask layer. Then I chose a nice cirrus sky from Switzerland (similar to Iowa, right???) and pasted it in. To help blend the horizon, I applied a gaussian blur to the mask layer and burned/darkened the tops of the trees.

[Nicole]

Well done adding the sky. I wouldn't have guessed that it wasn't the original (well, I mean, if I hadn't seen the original obviously ).

[Clusty]

Teewinot, I love yours! I think it's the best yet!

[windrider86]

Bravo! very well done. The sky looks great! That was where I was going with what I had done but didnt have time. You did a marvelous job my friend!