Author Topic: The wonders of Photoshop (the before and after thread) (Read 9136 times)

cosinaphile · « **Reply #100 on:** January 14, 2012, 10:38:51 PM »

Quote from: f64 on January 14, 2012, 04:34:05 PM

An early effort to save an image.
I converted to b&w, used levels to deepen blacks to enhance silhouette effect, and used clone tool to eliminate some elements.
Lastly, I used a gradient mask on a separate layer to even out the sky background.

Original from camera:

125_original by liam2033, on Flickr

After photoshop:

125_mod by liam2033, on Flickr

i love this

voyager · « **Reply #101 on:** January 16, 2012, 03:57:32 PM »

I liked the original, but it was too dark and there was a lot of artifacting from the type of editing I did in Lightroom.

The power to control the weather by shhflights, on Flickr

So I made more normal edits that don't leave that result. Better?

Details

Jason C · « **Reply #102 on:** January 16, 2012, 04:34:02 PM »

Before CS3:

After CS3, with a boost from Silver Efex Pro2:

Jason C

lisandra · « **Reply #103 on:** January 17, 2012, 08:00:53 PM »

A good job is not enough

cosinaphile · « **Reply #104 on:** January 17, 2012, 10:25:57 PM »

thats incredible ,but it would be better without the wire mesh fence , easy peasy for you

lisandra · « **Reply #105 on:** January 18, 2012, 07:49:02 AM »

Thanks, I could erase part of the fence, but the whole thing would be quite the task. I did the tube per customer request, now you got me thinking bout the fence...

cosinaphile · « **Reply #106 on:** January 18, 2012, 12:32:52 PM »

my photoshop skills are clumsy compared to lisandra , but purely from a visual clutter pov , it worth it

asterinex · « **Reply #107 on:** January 18, 2012, 12:45:13 PM »

Well done Cosa !

lisandra · « **Reply #108 on:** January 18, 2012, 09:08:11 PM »

Ok, so, no fence. This is as far as I can comfortably take it. The problem isnt that it isnt doable, its that it has to look real and natural at the 19.5x23.5 inches its gonna be printed in. Thanks for pushing me into it cosinaphile, it looks better without the fence definitely. I kept a tiny bit of foreground in there for a bit of 3Dness

cosinaphile · « **Reply #109 on:** January 18, 2012, 09:33:38 PM »

wow you are good, im very impressed.

vdub_er · « **Reply #110 on:** January 19, 2012, 04:57:55 AM »

Great work Lisandra, you know yourself if you hadn't removed the fence and you had it printed, it would've haunted you.

AmstelBright · « **Reply #111 on:** January 19, 2012, 05:29:16 AM »

Quote from: lisandra on January 17, 2012, 08:00:53 PM

A good job is not enough

This is incredible. How did you do that?

lisandra · « **Reply #112 on:** January 19, 2012, 10:21:32 AM »

Quote from: cosinaphile on January 18, 2012, 09:33:38 PM

wow you are good, im very impressed.

Thanks! id still do a bit of tweaking

Quote from: vdub_er on January 19, 2012, 04:57:55 AM

Great work Lisandra, you know yourself if you hadn't removed the fence and you had it printed, it would've haunted you.

it would, I would have ended up doing later even if it were just for fun

Quote

This is incredible. How did you do that?

A ton of work, a ton of steps. The most work is getting from the original to the second, the information on color is mostly all there, you just have to find it. You have to slooooowly balance out the colors until you get an acceptable tone and then pick an absolute perfect white and black points. A wrong white or black point will clip your photo in ways you dont want it, it might even look good, but far from the original, and people want it restored to original. Then comes the not so fun part of getting rid of color casts; if you look at the second one vs the final edit, you can see that I corrected a magenta cast in the dirt behind her on the right, I do that with layers and the color balance tool, well imagine doing that about 70 times. Then you gotta settle on a white balance, this is why I said the white balance brush in lighroom 4 is a godsend, sometimes a white balance makes an area of the photo look right, but screw up everything else. Then you gotta bring back the clarity (eliminate the "haze") that 35 years of humidity took away; its basically done by adjusting contrast carefully and selectively. Carefully because you dont wanna do any clipping and selectively because some areas need more attention than others. The clarity tool (and the color brushes) in lightroom plays a big role here too, I might import the photo to lightroom around 3 or 4 times before its done. I use layer masks in photoshop and brushes in lightroom for all that. Ive done edits that use as much as 70 layers of fixes. Then you gotta do the real fixes, the scratches, the dots, the creases of the photo, color errors, you name it. You can barely see it here but that photo had a green scratch from her nose to her dress, it was a pain to fix. There were a million dots and spots too. The bigger the print solicited, the more anal you have to be. So at the requested 19.5x23.5, im still not happy with the 100% crops (almost there though).

The tube and fence is basically done with the clone stamp tool. The secret to good clone stamping is using mainly a low hardness (0% to 25%) only going up at hard edges, and playing around with the opacity. A very important thing to keep thing natural is to avoid the repeated "pattern" when stamping, that is, clone out what you dont want and then clone out the pattern the cloning created by choosing a random point to stamp from. turn down the opacity on the stamp tool on areas you want to fade out. Dodge and burn a few things to create light fall off and youre done.

SOrry for the rant.

cosinaphile · « **Reply #113 on:** January 19, 2012, 10:34:14 AM »

no thanks for the details you should d a video tutorial for us lesser mortals

lisandra · « **Reply #114 on:** January 19, 2012, 01:12:02 PM »

I really would!! but the language!! me barely speak it!

Em5 Pete · « **Reply #115 on:** January 19, 2012, 03:56:35 PM »

Lisandra, that is a damn good job.
And your cloning tech is right on. Many times, cloning out a cloned area is needed to disguise it, and help blend it in.

vdub_er · « **Reply #116 on:** January 20, 2012, 05:13:53 AM »

Ref: Cloning I've started using the Patch tool in Photoshop a few times to do random or isolated areas and like the results.

lisandra · « **Reply #117 on:** February 08, 2012, 12:32:06 PM »

ignore the middle part, its for a bridal show display

AmstelBright · « **Reply #118 on:** February 11, 2012, 03:07:35 AM »

Quote from: lisandra on January 19, 2012, 10:21:32 AM

Quote
This is incredible. How did you do that?

A ton of work, a ton of steps. The most work is getting from the original to the second, the information on color is mostly all there, you just have to find it. You have to slooooowly balance out the colors until you get an acceptable tone and then pick an absolute perfect white and black points. A wrong white or black point will clip your photo in ways you dont want it, it might even look good, but far from the original, and people want it restored to original. Then comes the not so fun part of getting rid of color casts; if you look at the second one vs the final edit, you can see that I corrected a magenta cast in the dirt behind her on the right, I do that with layers and the color balance tool, well imagine doing that about 70 times. Then you gotta settle on a white balance, this is why I said the white balance brush in lighroom 4 is a godsend, sometimes a white balance makes an area of the photo look right, but screw up everything else. Then you gotta bring back the clarity (eliminate the "haze") that 35 years of humidity took away; its basically done by adjusting contrast carefully and selectively. Carefully because you dont wanna do any clipping and selectively because some areas need more attention than others. The clarity tool (and the color brushes) in lightroom plays a big role here too, I might import the photo to lightroom around 3 or 4 times before its done. I use layer masks in photoshop and brushes in lightroom for all that. Ive done edits that use as much as 70 layers of fixes. Then you gotta do the real fixes, the scratches, the dots, the creases of the photo, color errors, you name it. You can barely see it here but that photo had a green scratch from her nose to her dress, it was a pain to fix. There were a million dots and spots too. The bigger the print solicited, the more anal you have to be. So at the requested 19.5x23.5, im still not happy with the 100% crops (almost there though).

The tube and fence is basically done with the clone stamp tool. The secret to good clone stamping is using mainly a low hardness (0% to 25%) only going up at hard edges, and playing around with the opacity. A very important thing to keep thing natural is to avoid the repeated "pattern" when stamping, that is, clone out what you dont want and then clone out the pattern the cloning created by choosing a random point to stamp from. turn down the opacity on the stamp tool on areas you want to fade out. Dodge and burn a few things to create light fall off and youre done.

SOrry for the rant.

Thanks for that rant, Lisandra!

Really appreciate it!

(And apologies for my late reply - I lost track of this thread for a while.)

lisandra · « **Reply #119 on:** February 23, 2012, 02:19:10 PM »

well, as adash did sugest, I turned the car looking the other way.It was already paid for but i did ask for an opinion and Adash took the time to write a suggestion so i might as well honor it. I played jeff bucklet's halleluiah on the background and started cloning away. the second one is clickable. can i clone or can i clone?

Details

Em5 Pete · « **Reply #120 on:** February 24, 2012, 05:44:37 PM »

2nd one is much better !

The car leads "INTO" the picture.

lisandra · « **Reply #121 on:** February 24, 2012, 07:03:27 PM »

I've done some pretty crazy stuff, but somehow this one has impressed me profoundly. Like pat myself on the back profoundly. And it wasn't all that hard to do if you can believe it. Before this, if you would have showed me these two photos I wouldn't have believe it was PhotoShop

lisandra · « **Reply #122 on:** February 27, 2012, 09:04:55 PM »

Got offered an extra 500$ for the edit.

I feel like I should send adash a 10% check...

adash · « **Reply #123 on:** February 28, 2012, 02:21:19 AM »

Quote

I feel like I should send adash a 10% check...

Donate a tiny bit to the forum. I am very glad I could help.

lisandra · « **Reply #124 on:** February 28, 2012, 06:30:23 AM »

Quote from: adash on February 28, 2012, 02:21:19 AM

Quote
I feel like I should send adash a 10% check...
Donate a tiny bit to the forum. I am very glad I could help.

I've been meaning to do that for a while now, I'm just sorting out some kinks from my card (it got hacked and its been hell).

Author Topic: The wonders of Photoshop (the before and after thread) (Read 9136 times)

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