A Steal

[GB1]

Took this last night in downtown San Diego about 30 min after sunset.

Any good? Yes, it is an HDR..

G

[hminx]

loverly light control GB, very nice image. Was the street really this tidy or did you clean it up in post

[CLKunst]

I gotta play the 'I Wish' game with this one... I wish the sky were deep blue not gray. And I wish the sign was more interesting I had to go back and look because I had no idea what we were stealing. And I wish that camera pole wasn't sticking out of the side of the frame.

In fact, once I started looking, paranoid much San Diego? There are surveillance cameras everywhere on those buildings! I guess I've been out of the city for a while now. Happy I'm not being filmed for 12 different angles. That's why the street's are so clean Pete. If you litter they can see you and there's a little man in a box hidden at every corner that will pop out, whack you on the shins and make you pay a fine.

[armando_m]

wow, the hdr is very well done !
did you considered fixing the perspective ?

[ksbryan0]

I'm a fan of this one! Really nice job in post. I like the twisted distortion here, as it seems to add some impossible lines that make the comp even more interesting. While I agree with Cindy's wish that the camera pole wasn't there...the bigger negative issue to me is the bright light in the lower left. Not sure if you can tone that down or not, but I think that would be helpful.

[GB1]

Thanks everyone. I'm mostly happy with this one, feeling its geometry is powerful and inspiring, but was concerned about its distortion.

Pete - I did tidy it up but only a little, mostly on the left side. I guess what mostly attracted me here was it's even and warm lighting although its geometry is nice too.

Cindy - No problem, I like the wishlist critiques!! You really want a blue sky vs. the grey? I thought the grey was moody here. Yeah, the Wine Steals sign isn't super-prominent... I wish it was bigger.

I agree the camera pole is a bit unnatural. Does it add a techno feel to the shot though? Never really concerned myself with the cameras around buildings .. it turns out that this is right next to the S.D. Padres ballpark, which they call "Petco Park", so I guess they need security cameras to know the crowd situation (and maybe keep an eye on all the drunk rowdies and/or the litterbugs ).

Armando, I did try a fix on the perspective using CS6's Lens Correction function. It really removed a lot of the peripherals and seems to soften up the image a bit too. I attach it for your viewing. What I did to make it a bit better was selectively sharpen the corrected area more than the other area.

Ken, thanks for the kind words on the distortion. That's what I really was questioning: is it artsy, or is it nasty? I don't think digitally removing that camera pole would be that hard btw, but which light is distracting, the lowest left light or the one just above (which turns out to be the stadium lights that they left on)?

GB

[ksbryan0]

but which light is distracting, the lowest left light or the one just above (which turns out to be the stadium lights that they left on)?

Must be the stadium light...about one-third up from the bottom.

Edit: BTW, I prefer the original image...the distortion corrected image is too tight and crops out a fair amount of features of interest, IMO.

[armando_m]

Greg,
how did you fixed the perspective, you did loose a lot

I downloaded the original
grew the canvas by 30%
did a transform - skew (bicubic)
crop to original ratio
this created a bit of pink cushion distortion
try some distortion fix
created empty corners at the bottom that I filled in with content aware
smart sharpen 50% 3 pixels - luminosity only

it look ok to me

I did loose the offending pole and bright lights on the left with the skew correction

[GB1]

Ken - I agree that the adjusted image is a little tight. But that does eliminate that pesky stadium lighting

Armando - All I did was use the Lens Correction tool on Custom setting. Post yours and let's see how it is!

Here's what I did:

Lens Correction->Custom
Vertical Perspective = -85
Then sharpened. As mentioned, it appeared to be softer at the top than the bottom. Therefore, sharpened the whole image to where the bottom was sharp (and the top needing more), duplicated the (background) layer, sharpened that to where the top was good (meaning the bottom was over-sharpened), then hide the layer using the menu's Layer->Layer Mask->Hide All. I then used a graduated fill to 'undo' the hiding of the layer mask, using white at top and black at bottom (this meant that the top sharpened part showed, but the bottom area didn't, so the over-sharpened area remained hidden).

btw the above technique works for most *anything*: sharpening, filling, darkening, .... anything you do to an image, but only want to do it to a selected area. You can do your adjustments, hide the layer and then undo selective areas of the hiding using a light-colored brush tool.

G

[ybsorc]

Nice picture, I spent a couple months in San Diego back in 1980-81 while in the Navy, I do not remember it being this clean though!

[armando_m]

GB, here is my attempt, certainly not 100% corrected to vertical lines


lets see how it looks after uploading it here, the file size went from 400+k to 200k

ok ... looks nasty

but you get an idea of the fixing of the perspective

I see that yours is also an attachment ... how do you prevent the upload process from making it a tiny image ?