Show us your skills!

[DownByFive]

Okay, I'm taking this idea from a thread on dpreview.com a while ago, but who cares...So I'm interested in seeing some of your favorite examples of PP on your images, with maybe a quick explanation of what you've done.

Here's a couple that took a lot of work...



I adjusted the exposure in RAW for the highlights, and then again for the shadows, then composited them together. I cloned out some distracting stuff in the water, uped the contrast, and applied some USM. It could probably use some more work, but this is where I decided to call it quits...





I also think I composited this one, but I can't remember. But I had to a lot of dodging, burning, levels, and contrast adjustments. Then I had to rotate slightly and crop, and apply some USM.



Now let's see yours!

[opus]

This is an awesome thread!

I think I've archived away most of the stuff I've PSed ... I'll have to go dig it out to post anything.

Can't wait to see what others have done though!

[SmartWombat]

Just a before and after.
Removed all the dandruff (!) form her shirt, skin blemishes, and other cleaning up.
Cloning only on this, nothing else.

I know colour adjustment and levels would help, along with some local softening and sharpening.
I'm just not at the level of skill yet to do local, layered, seleted adjustments.

[Knight]

Twins ? think not just a clone & then fliped horizontaly . using PS

[Asylum Steve]

All modesty aside, I never pass up the opportunity to show off a little. And as much as I love doing wild, surreal stuff like some of my web pages, many times the ps work I enjoy the most is retouching a photo and having the editing not so obvious.

This is an example of (what I thought was) an real cool styling concept, taken of a model in a park near the University of Tampa. The lighting, colors, styling, and composition were fine, but the original slide showed quite a flawed scene.

From what I can remember, the touchup was basically using curves and hue/sat to adjust the color balance, and the clone tool the "patch up" the bare spots in the grass and clean up the debris on the pavement...

[Asylum Steve]

Here's another recent retouch of a model shot, turning what I thought was a decent pic into a much more stylized image.

Model Julie, while a very attractive woman, is not a professional model, and the side lighting, meant to be unconventional, though soft, is not the most flattering. The stray hairs and clothing wrinkles are very typical of even a carefully planned studio shoot.

My vision for the final image was clean, soft, high-key symmetry, with a focus on her eye makup (pic was shot for a makeup studio).

What I did in retouch was to lighten the whole pic with levels, clean up her skin and hairline with the healing brush, clone one side of her hair to the other for a mirror effect, clean up stray hairs and eliminate the detailing in her blouse. I also changed the color of the bg to match her eyes and lips better.

Finally, I used the lens blur filter to have a "selective focus" on her face, creating the same effect as if I had shot with a very wide open aperture and focused on the plane of her eyes and mouth.

[Chunk]

I'll play. I took this shot this morning after the sunrise at the malthouse. It's one of those scenes that I've been driving by all my life and never stopping to shoot. I'm glad the geese were there to help.
Levels
Color correction moving middle tones and highlights away from blues and cyan toward yellow and red.
Curves.
Unsharp mask of luminosity channel in Lab Mode.

[mjs1973]

My turn. I had this posted a while back so it may not be new to some of you. The image is too large to post here, so I put it on it's own web page for you to take a look at. The final image looks nothing like I had invisioned when I took the originals, but I like the results. PS 5 was used for the entire project. No stitching programs involved. I didn't even know I had one until I was done with this. This was my first attempt at combining images together. So here it is again for everyone to see.

http://webpages.charter.net/mjs1973/

[natatbeach]

the photo
and then the piece of art

[oOBrieOo]

Sorry, I know this is an old post, but i'm new. Just found it. ;) I already posted these in the "art" forum. Tried to go delete it, but don't have that option on this forum.. So here's a couple snake works. Nothing fancy.. But it took alot of time to do. LOL.

Don't know if its exactly what you're looking for, though.. Its simply the Glowing Edges filter, Some color touch up with Selective Color, and lots.. and lots.. of erasing, everything but outlines..



original





original

[Steph_B]

Great post DB5!

This took some time ... and planning.

I wanted to try creating a panoramic by merging frames taken in a protrait format (and thus have more vertical resolution). I came accross this bench protected by a grove of pine trees. and overlooking a large lawn in one of Vancouver's park.

In order to avoid distortions, I used my 50mm F.8. The time of the day was high noon, and I knew that Velvia could not get the whole dynamic range of this scene. So I decided to go for a high-key sort of shot (blown out highlights and defined shadows). I spot metered on the tree bark and added a -1.7EV exposure to it.

I took 4 consecutive frames with about 50% overlay. Special care was taken in order to avoid merging lines caused by merging tree trunks.

After scanning each frame at 4000 dpi, I made sure that they were perfectly aligned before merging them.

The stitching took considerable time at this resolution. Once this was done, I played with the curve, level and mostly saturation tool to tune down the strong green tone of the grass. I also inverted the orientation of the pic so that it is easier to 'read'.

Quite a bit of work, but I like the result!

Got to love PS... give you something to do during those rainy days in Vancouver!

Cheers,

Steph.

[another view]

Reviving an old thread... Very interesting to see what other people do with PS. Good thread, DB5!

Usually I do whatever I can to get the image right at time of capture - I guess it's from shooting all of those slides. I do this because it saves time later, and in a lot of cases a JPEG will give you excellent results because you're not doing too much to the original file. That doesn't always work though. Here's a recent shot of a friend's puppy who loves to eat anything she can get in her mouth and roll around in the grass. Trying to brush her off everytime she laid down just wasn't going to work, so here's a crop of the original and the finished shot. Other than the cloning, just a little USM and 81A filter at about 15%.

[Liz]

Wow! This one is awesome. What a difference. You really know how to work that stuff. It's my weakness, to be honest. I can't stand sitting at the computer - that's the biggest problem as I spend too much time there working, etc. It's not fun for me. I do little editing, basically just brighten/contrast/sharpness. I got PSElements 3 and the book by Scott Kelby which is written for dummies like me. So, hopefully I'll improve.

This one is a hanger.

Liz

I'll play. I took this shot this morning after the sunrise at the malthouse. It's one of those scenes that I've been driving by all my life and never stopping to shoot. I'm glad the geese were there to help.
Levels
Color correction moving middle tones and highlights away from blues and cyan toward yellow and red.
Curves.
Unsharp mask of luminosity channel in Lab Mode.

[Liz]

great improvements on the images. I'm amazed at all that PS can do. I love pressing that shutter button but sitting at the computer for editing is the weak area of photography. However, these posts are very encouraging. Thanks for doing this - very interesting.

Liz

Okay, I'm taking this idea from a thread on dpreview.com a while ago, but who cares...So I'm interested in seeing some of your favorite examples of PP on your images, with maybe a quick explanation of what you've done.

Here's a couple that took a lot of work...



I adjusted the exposure in RAW for the highlights, and then again for the shadows, then composited them together. I cloned out some distracting stuff in the water, uped the contrast, and applied some USM. It could probably use some more work, but this is where I decided to call it quits...





I also think I composited this one, but I can't remember. But I had to a lot of dodging, burning, levels, and contrast adjustments. Then I had to rotate slightly and crop, and apply some USM.



Now let's see yours!