Something you might like to play with

[mikemeister_admin]

Are we all worn out or are we now at a loose end?

It has been suggested that we could post images for all of us to play with.

I have not got any good examples of shadow/highlight photo, but thought we could play with one/all of these (unless anybody has a more difficult example).
The 1st I took on my morning walk last week.
2nd is an underexposed church to perserve the window & altar detail
3rd is an awful scan of an old slide!

I reckon we should start with basic curving (in any colour space) - and showing what we did and then add any other technique if it will help and pass on the details.

So if you like the idea, please play!







Chris

[ggroess]

I'll bite Chris...

Here is my swing at your sunny morning...

Greg

[ggroess]

The Church interior required a bit more work...

I started in RGB to keep some of the color in the image.  after getting it as far as I could without losing detail in the windows and having the ceiling get too muddy, I closed it out of CM and re-opened it in LAB.

In Lab I opened it up a bit more in the shadows and added even more saturation.  It is hard to know where neutral is so I left it alone.  I think I can get away with not having a neutral since the light from the windows is mixed and churches are famous for candle wax stained ceilings and odd colors...Lastly and to justify my not working on the greenish cyan cast in the walls..I have seen some churches in europe with a greenish color to the stone walls. 

Greg

[ggroess]

and lastly...

I'm holding my cards close to the vest on this one...

Chris, there was not a lot of data to work with...but hey that's what makes this fun stuff right...
Below are my results...let's see what others can do....

I will tell you that this image required me to use PS tools other than CM to get the job done...

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Greg,

I is very pity that the .jpg is full of jpg artifacts.
so, I had the same result.

frits

[mikemeister_admin]

Sorry if I have caused problems with down sizing the images - and I really did not expect anybody to 'bite', so soon (guess you can not resist a challenge Greg!) - I will have to get my skates on when I have a spare moment and see what I can do with these images.

I am very impressed by your corrections Greg - you are setting a high standard for the rest of us to try and achieve!  I hope when we have all finished having a go at the terrible scan, that you will reveal your PS secrets.

Chris

[ggroess]

lol..it's simple really...


MAGIC....

hehe...

It did look for a while as though I was going to have to go to the masks to get it done but I did not need to...Was that really a bad slide scan or did you spike the image??

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

No I didn't spike it - the slide is over 30 years old and I dont have a proper scanner!

[ggroess]

wow...It looked like a mask was added to the image for the sky when I was working on it the sky went all wierd but in a very "drawn on" way..I was convinced that you had masked the sky and spiked it down...

Interesting....

[mikemeister_admin]

Well I had a bash (well about half a dozen with different approaches) at the 3rd one, which I had thought impossible

I seem to have lost my first CM curve, but basically I curved for luminosity, then I added contrast with Local Contrast of 7 pixels, because I had lost too much contrast in the foreground, and finally altered the colour in CM lab - giving...



I am still in shock that we could get anything out of this scan and persumably doing this at full size, rather than the artifact 800x600 might even give a half presentable image - amazing.