Taking BART to MacWorld, thinking about neutrals

[mikemeister_admin]

Joe's Boat.Can I darken the green in the grasses but not change the slime on the boat?There's a touch of unsharpmask.GregM

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Hi Greg,

Although I like the softer look of some of the shadows, particularly those along the edge of the boat, your Lightness curve has given up the pure blacks and whites of the original image, and reduced the contrast overall.

There is a lot of latitude for individual preference, but for the purposes of the class, the final image should have pure black and white somewhere, texture and detail in important areas should be increased (this means steeper curves for important areas of the image).

For the majority of images in the class, the a and b curves should be straight lines, with the center points determined by the neutral, and the overall slope set using the saturation slider. (there is no clear neutral in this image, BTW).

That said, your image could be thought of as an artistic one that adds atmosphere - like a light fog - to the image and gives it a peaceful softness.  This is a perfectly valid interpretation, but the techniques I'm presenting here are pushing always toward increased color and contrast.  I've included an example of the image that uses the techniques of setting the highlight and shadow by thresholding in Lab, then bumps the color a bit, to show the kind of result I'm taking about.

[mikemeister_admin]

I rethought the threshholds and A and B are set to 64.I used a little sharpening to draw attion to the one window with a crossbar remaining.Geat picture J.Greg M

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Very nice.  I love what you've done to the place :-)

One thing that is a pleasant surprise is the way the rust-colored panels show up so well, and contrast with the cooler colors of the water and sky.  Nice job on the textures too.

This is not to say that JoeS's original is not excellent as well, but these are the techniques we're looking at at the moment.