Thread: LGK Photo Editing Conference

In the spirit of the photo challenge, here is a very low key photo editing conference. I call it a conference because it isn't really a challenge, but a chance for people to work on the same image, and share both their different results, and more importantly their work flow and the way they got there.

There are no rules as to what you can do to the image, just as long as you can describe how you got there. So in that spirit, attached is an image that I took a while back, which I was fairly happy with the result, but I imagine that could be made a bit better with some work.

Here is the middle exposure:

So here is my edit:


This was a straight CS3 HDR with almost no tweaking by me, and really the only thing I did to it was put a LBA warming filter at about an 85% density.

The RAWs are available here:
+0
+2
-2

I'm not sure this is even the best candidate for HDR, but there is nothing to say you have to use HDR, so lets see your results!

Also, feel free to post images of your own that you would like the group to take a crack at.

If you're interested in playing around with HDR for the above images, a good program to start with is Photomatix. There's a free trial to be had at that website.

Also, here's a good tutorial: Stuck In Customs.

Turn all the knobs till you get detail in the dark spots and light spots.

Greyscale is uber artsy. Then sharpen for detail. I dont have any cool [edit: erased remainder of this sentence so as not to end up in the quote box again.]

Faking the Lomo


This method was brought up in the current LGK photo challenge but here is the step by step to reach this - http://www.flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/12082/

Personally i like the old picture look the Lomo effect gives

Alright, here's my shot....

CS3 HDR conversion... but I didn't like it as much... so I made the HDR, and layered it with the three RAW pictures (which I tweaked), then used a variety of things like, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, the eraser tool with 10%-50% opacity, many different looks...... so it ended up being the HDR that PS made, with I suppose what could be my own HDR on top? (Layer masking... etc.)... does that make ANY sense?

I wanted a little more color, 'cause I wanted the image to pop. I dunno... what do YOU think?

Nice work by everybody!

Changing gears a little, I wanted to get some input on playing around with these for a possible reshoot. I shot these against white to get the following:



My wife's comment on the image is that it might look cool on a more vibrant background, so I threw together this quick version by creating a new layer, filling it with blue and red squares, set the blending mode to color, and then changed the layer's blending option (blend if Gray and underlying layer: 135/ 250 to 255), and added a mask so the white bits of the cabbage and the peas didn't take on the color of the background. I'm not so sure I'm digging the red square so much.



I would be interested to see others people ideas with this. Let me know if you want the big versions of these to play with.

A round of comments on the first image:

Rinkrat: a nice HDR, you can start to see the sun, and still retain a lot of info in the shadows, nice tone mapping. My one thing would be it might be nice to bring up the blacks just a touch, but I think this might be the route I would start down if I were doing this image over again, nice work.

Ruely: Now I want to know what the end of that sentence is! For not having any cool ??? that is a nice conversion. I think the one thing I would say is the same comment I made on RR's image, and that is a want for some deep blacks. B+W is an interesting idea for this, I like it.

imamonsta: I think the Lomo look works for this, one thing I like about it is the vignetting that is going on is that it focuses the viewer a bit more. The one thing I don't like about the Lomo look is that compresses the range a bit (which is a part of the charm of the Lomo), but with such gradients going on, I personally feel that the lack of range can hamper the image a bit.

HeShootsNScores:

I dunno... what do YOU think?

Does it really matter what I think? It is all about what you like when editing
I like the vibrance that you are trying to bring to the image, and the range and tone mapping are great, but I think that due to the difficulty of cleanly boasting colors in a RGB color space, you are having problems getting a believable palette of colors. I think to do that well for this image, you might want to pump the colors up in the LAB color space - Image -> Mode -> LAB Color. Once in LAB, the simple (and often heavy handed, so tread lightly) way of doing this is to create a new curves adjustment layer, and steepen the A and B channel curves. As long as you keep the center point of the curve in the same place (so you will have to bring both ends of the curve in) you won't impart a color cast to the image. The nice thing about doing in on an adjustment layer is that you can then fade the strength of the adjustment, as well as create a mask for it so you are not effecting the entire image if you don't want.

This of course is the very simple walk through of the LAB space, there are great books on it, but it can be a handy space.

Great images everybody. If I get a chance, I'd like to work on it as well, taking some of the ideas that you guys have shared.

OK, I took another pass at it, tried to bring in a bit of the suggestions above:



Pretty much followed exactly the tutorial that Glenn posted