Edit Challenge 2020

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.

My intention was to incorporate something from each one of the 8 different photos and I did.
There are way too many adjustments and techniques to document so just enjoy finding everything.
White Balance and Levels adjustments are the key factors in making this compilation look even slightly realistic.
A fun distraction from all the other things happening around us.

Sunset shot while on a cruise on an earth-sized moon of a gas giant in orbit aroundZeta2 Cancri Cb  2. :-)

This was my first attempt ever trying this kind of composite, were I wanted a twilight sky to fade into a more fanstastic nebulae type starfield, and then the gas giant also in the sky.  I hesitated to post this since it has a lot of flaws, but may as well let people see what my "vision" was for this image.  (e.g. only after I was well along into creating the composite did I realize that the planet to be that near a setting sun would have more of a "new moon" look, since the side towards us would be in shadow. And I was never happy with the transition from "real" sky to the fantasy one.)

The components (original photo, nebulae star field, gas giant planet) were brought into photoshop. The original image had the colours and saturations sweetened to make the red/yellows stand out more.  A lot of gradient masks on each additional compontent to try and get the fades to look decent. Some additional tweaks to the masks so that photo's cloud layer would be in front of the other components with no transparency to them.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the funky name ... it implies the gas giant is the second planet orbiting Zeta2 Cancri Cb, which is a star in the constellation of Cancer which happens to be the same class of star as is our sun. So if this "moon" had an atmosphere similar to earth (since the photographer in the photo is not wearing an environment suit!), then the sunsets there would look similar to ours. :-)

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.

This takes the image in the opposite direction of my other version of this photo, focusing (pardon pun) on trying to bring details out of the image.

This was lightroom edit.  Basic exposure/contrast to beef up land details, overall colour temp warming, then an inverse temp cooling done with gradient adjustment on the water. Adjustment brush on te cloud areas to bring back some of the details there. General sharpening/denoising to deal with grain in original image, and finally a curves adjustment to make highlights pop a bit more.

In this treatment, I sought to soften the overall look of the image, to give it a bit of a dreamy/painterly look.

All work was done in Lightroom. General exposure and contrast adjustment to strengthen lines between details. Sharpen/denoise to reduce some of the grain in the original image.  Clarity/vibrance/dehaze applied to bring up the colour range and pop details contrast.  Finally dragged "Texture" to its limit in negative direction, which has effect of softening lines and smoothing areas of uniform colour.

My third attempt on this image.  This time using Topaz "painting" type filters. When I try these pixel painting looks, it's often because I feel the image has a certain "mood", and the painting process can simplify away some of the distracting details of a photograph but hopefully keeping (or enhancing) the mood.  In this case the mood for me is that a large ship carrying some 3,000 passengers is still dwarfed by the cold austere environment through which it sails.

This is an "all in Topaz" work. First Sharpen AI was applied to clean up edges and grain, revealing landscape details. Some finer refinement of the image ("precision detail")  to continue to emphasize the texture of the landscape. Finally the pixel paining process is achieved through two filters: "Smudge" and "Impression".

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.

This reminded me of the hundreds of failed sunset pictures on my hard drive. I used the Lightroom Hue/Saturation/Luminosity panel to intensify the saturation & luminosity of the red, orange and yellow  hues and intensify the blue saturation while reducing its luminosity. I created two virtual copies; one I reduced the exposure by 4 EV; the other I increased the exposure by 3.5 EV. I used the Lightroom Photo Merge/HDR to blend the original and its two copies into a single image. I finished with some sharpening and clarity tweaks. The photo shoot in the lower left corner was a surprise bonus.

If we lived near a nebula, the nearby stars and illuminated gases would be visible soon after the sun set ... or might even be somewhat visible during the day.  And we also seem to be orbiting a gas giant because ... well, it's my reality. :-)

The photo was prepped in Lightroom, with the lower corner having an exposure gradient adjustment, trying to darken it so people would not be visible.  The sun had a radial adjustment added to increase contrast, saturation and immedite brightess to make the aperture star rays stand out more.

Then the image was brought into photoshop for the composite work, Adding nebula star field and gas giant as layers with gradient masks applied to try and get a decent fade from sunset sky into darker zenith where stars would be first visible.

I thought that this was a fairly good image to start with.  It just needed a bit of a cleanup.  Edits performed:

Lightroom: straightened, cropped, sensor spot removal.

Color Efex Pro: detail extractor.

Topaz DeNoise AI: reduce noise

Silver Efex Pro: convert to B&W.

a new wife waiting for the return of "her man" ? The empty space on the river begged for something to come out of the mist.  And if there's going to be a boat, we need someone to be watcing it.

A fairly straight forward composite -- boat is "misted" with a partially visible "fog" layer, foreground model was posed to be leaning on the railing. Attempt was made to try and match the somewhat even lighting in the  original photo, though with sky color it appears most of the fog was lower down and closer to the water, so upper part of sails would be catching brighter light(?)  Ship wake was hand painted, so not the most accurate.

My Editing:  I mainly use Lightroom with the Nik software add on.  I first used my standard treatment, exposure set, highlight and shadow enhancing, then used the white, black and clarity controls.  I also cropped the photo to produce a square image.  I wanted to have the walkway as the main focus and not have it compete with the water that was part of the original photo.  My goal with this picture was to maintain the softness of a cool morning mist with the sharpness of the immediate field of vision.  I used Nik’s Colour Effects Pro to adjust the colour with both a preset and manual adjustments.  The picture was originally a bit darker, but I wanted to brighten it up, but maintain that blue, “colour focus.”  I like the cooler, bluing feel where even the green has a blue tinge.

I liked the shallow S curve of the seawall. In Lightroom I used the HSL panel to selectively adjust the colours. Basically I set all of the saturation levels to zero creating a grayscale image. I increased the saturation in the key colours: blue green and magenta until I got a pleasing effect. I adusted the blue and green luminosity to darken the sky and grass. I created two virtual copies; one I reduced the exposure by 3 EV; the other I increased the exposure by 3 EV. I used the Lightroom Photo Merge/HDR to blend the original and its two copies into a single image. I finished with some sharpening and clarity tweaks.

Used Affinity Photo for all edits.

Used various methods to select and refine selection of the squirrel EC8.

Copied and pasted squirrel into seawall photo

Placed squirrel and used a perspective adjustment to align with the railing.

Used an Inpainting brush to remove the sign post.

Used a Tone Map on the background to even the shadows and highlights.

Adjusted the White Balance to add the pink tones to the sky.

Used a temporary monochrome adjustment to allow me to match the luminosity on the squirrel using a levels adjustment.

Used an HSL adjustment on the squirrel to remove some greens and blues.

Add a touch of a gaussian blur and added some noise on the squirrel to match the background.

Added a soft shadow under the squirrel.

Added an HSL adjustment on the background to tone down the blue railings.

Used a Black and White adjustment with a luminosity blend mode to to get precise control of luminosity of each colour.

Made a custom vignette using a lasso selection, applying a curve to darken and then adding a gaussian blur on the adjustment.

1. a few tweels in LIghtroom

2. Photoship-Inverted image

3. Polar Coordinates-Polar to Rectangular

4. Back to LIghtroom-Crop and few more tweels

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.

I'm rather fond of birds and these two presented a challenge. In Lightroom I used the White Balance picker (dropper?) to select the gray in the tail of the foreground bird. Once the white balance was corrected I used the H/S/L panel to enhance the red, orange and yellow colours and darken the blue and green. I created two virtual copies; one I reduced the exposure by 4 EV; the other I increased the exposure by 4 EV. I used the Lightroom Photo Merge/HDR to blend the original and its two copies into a single image. I finished with a tighter crop on the birds and some sharpening and clarity tweaks.

I was attracted to the contrast between the subject's inverted vertical position and the strong horizontal elements in the background. In Lightroom I used the HSL panel to selectively adjust the colours. Basically I set all of the saturation levels to zero creating a grayscale image. I increased the red, orange and blue saturation until I got the effect I was looking for. I increased the red and orange luminosity slightly and darkened the blue. I left the saturation of the other colours at -50 to bring out the grayness of the concrete.  I cropped the image  into a horizontal format and finished with some sharpening and clarity tweaks.

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.

My Editing:  I mainly use Lightroom with the Nik software add on.  I first used my standard treatment, exposure set, highlight and shadow enhancing, then used the white, black and clarity controls.  My goal was to bring as much detail as possible into the picture.  I next chose to edit in the Colour Effects Pro program from Nik software.  I chose the darker look from the presets, adjusted so the pink colour, “popped), then saved and went back to editing in Lightroom.  I used the Gradient filter to create a spotlight effect and to enhance the colour’s a bit more.  I found a balance that I was happy with and here we are, thank you!!

This is one of the original images for the Edit Challenge 2020. Members were encourage to take this image and see what  they could create from it.