Curvemeister Forum

Ok a play on words....

Help this image along with some better balance, drama and color.  No specific goals here just make it look as good as possible.

Greg

Just to show how out of touch I am - this is my quick correction
I await to see how bad it is compare to a 'proper' workflow

Why not overdo it ;D  I threw it into Photomatix for a HDR feeling and then curved it and sharpened it

Wow Ganna..The wall positively bleeds on my monitor...I like the effect...But....
I took this a different direction from where you have it...

For me, I wanted the window frame to be neutral and the rust colored areas to have as much color differentiation as possible.  I wanted the area under the frame to be "bluer" in appearance since it seemed like there was little or no Blue or Green in the image.  This makes a fine Black and White by the way; because it so monotone...

1) I opened with a contrast and tonal modification using CM on the Red and Green channels individually.  I set the Shadow and Highlight points on both Red and Green and adjusted the mid-tone contrast a bit to make the image overall "snappier".  I then copied the finished Red channel into the Blue channel.  I applied this as a Luminosity Layer and flattened the image.  I could have used the Zone system pins in CM but I found the contrast in the mid-tones  fairly easily.

2) Next step was a By the Numbers correction I copied the image onto a layer and applied the BTN result in Color Mode.  I flattened the image again.

3) In CM I switched to LAB for a color expansion.  I set a hue clock on the edge of the window frame to act as my color anchor and then using contrast pins I expanded the A channel by selecting two points on the red side of the channel and increasing the contrast between them.  I then moved the two points downward in this case until the hue clock A channel value matched up to the original one.  I moved onto the B channel and selected two points for the B channel expansion.  Keeping my goals in mind I placed on pin under the window and one pin in the "yellow" area near some rust.  I again applied a contrast pin move to the selected points and returned the B channel value at the hue clock back to where it started.  I applied this layer in normal mode.

4) Sharpened using a Highpass filter set to 1.7 pixels and reduced the opacity of the sharpen layer to 75%. 

That's about it...
Greg

Nice,Greg.I like how you got slightly different overal colors for the upper and lower sections of the window.GregM
Also you and Zog kept the checkering to the bottom wood frame.

The variation is due to expanding the colors in the B channel in LAB.  It's a great technique that give you lots of control.

Greg