What Would You Do? 108

[ydnew44]

been thinking again!

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[NZMXr]

Again used my favorite adjustment layers ... to alter contrast and tones on building, sky, grass, trees, then as I was saving this pesky squirrel poped up in front of the building

[Chip]

1) Converted to GIMP using the "c2g" function in GECL (under tools)

2) Duplicted the layer and auto-stretched contrast; set new layer to "darken", and then reduced opacity to 75%.

That's it. It's more "over the top" than what I normally do, but it seems to work on this photo for some reason.

[windrider86]

Love the "famous" squirell- gave me a nice chuckle this morning!
Warewoul gives me the creeps
Chip- you are right, works very well for this image!

[VegasMike]

Wow! This is my first time trying a "what would you do". I thought a B/W conversion would work with a layer to bring out some more detail. I then used a frame layer to give it the look of a photo my Grandpa might have taken.

[Zim]

(Click the image to view full-size)
Well, there are a lot of things going on here, let me explain them briefly one by one (trying to remember everything).
The first thing I do always is check the histogram. The histogram as you know it's like the heartbeat of a shot, it gives us a very important reference. In this case, it was pretty good. However, the shot looked dull. So, to start, I applied part of the process I use to apply to my own shots to enhance images: I duplicated the base layer, and applied it as soft light. To get things a bit sharpen, I added a high pass filter after that.
Then I tried to pop out colors by using a vibrance filter (it's almost like playing with the saturation... but better).
After that, I used three photo filters (with their masks): first one orange filter for the whole image; then a yellow one in the grass and a green one on the trees (only on the one next to the house and those in the right; the other ones were left untouched).
At this point, I played a bit with the intensity of the adjustment layers.
That's 75% of the image.
To finish -just to add something new- I made a mask to apply the lens blur effect and create some fake DoF. To be sincere, I wasn't in the mood to carefully mask the tree, and that could have added a lot to the final result. Quick tip: In this kind of shots where the (fake) focus gets lost in the horizon and there are not so much elements in front of the camera, you can start creating the mask using a linear gradient, starting from the horizon, towards the "focus plane". This was the final mask for the lens blur:

Once I applied the lens blur, curves came to the rescue. (Note: my objective here was to bring the house to the front and contrast it more with the background, to create "levels" or layers) I darkened the blurred layer to bring the background to the back (as silly as that sounds). It would have been valid to add light too, but I liked better the dark result.
Finally, I added a vignette with help of three adjustment layers (exposure, vibrance and a black solid).

PS: This is my first post! I hope you understand my English

[Chip]

Zim - Looks great, and a very helpful explanation. I never would've thought to add a gradient to the blur layer, but doing so sure makes sense.

Very impressive job all around, especially with bringing the house close and moving the background back.

And welcome to DPS!

[Zim]

Originally Posted by Chip

Zim - Looks great, and a very helpful explanation. I never would've thought to add a gradient to the blur layer, but doing so sure makes sense.

Very impressive job all around, especially with bringing the house close and moving the background back.

And welcome to DPS!

Thank you! :)

In Photoshop, if you first create a mask for a layer and then add lens blur, you can choose to use the mask as depth map (select the option "layer mask"). This creates a more realistic result than if you just apply lens blur to the whole image and then mask out what you don't like.
I'm afraid I don't know how the lens blur process goes for similar tools (like GIMP).

[FromtheBackofaHorse]

I decided it looked like a winter storm was moving in.

[Fred flyfisher]

Here is my contribution, hope y'all like it.

From DPS

The steps I took:
1. Opened in camera raw mode.
2. Turned up the contrast.
3. Opened in PS
4. Copied the BG layer, converted to BW turned the yellows more to the dark side.
5. Applied a sepia via the BW settings.
6. Copied layer 1
7. Applied a lens blur and masked out the parts I wanted in focus to layer 1. Somewhat as Zim did. ( BTW, His post inspired me to do this. Thanks Zim!)
8. Flattened image
9. Copied BG
10. Applied a radial blur centered on the building.
11. Applied black layer
12. Erased the black in the areas I didn’t want it
13. Turned the opacity down to about 20% or so to create a vignette of sorts then flattened and saved.

When I saw this I immediately thought western… Dunno why but I imagined Jesse James or one of the Younger brothers hiding out there. BTW, I LOVE the squirrel... LOL. Great exercise.