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>>> - Challenge 45 - The Electric Connection - <<<

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I just posted my very first image :)
But a question... why is there ( ) in front of every images?
balthus666 said:
Hello all :)

I'm also new here and I just discover this forum and this contest
few days ago. Wow , a nice and interesting way to learn tips or to
use ur imagination to take picture...
I'm an powershot G1 owner from Belgium and I hope to submit soon
some pics to participate.
I had a look a the gallery and some ppl pics are really amazing...

Laurent
Click to expand...
 
Welcome! We put the * after the photo title if you want more in-depth review and comments from other folks. Hope we will see more photos from you.

Steve
balthus666 said:
balthus666 said:
Hello all :)

I'm also new here and I just discover this forum and this contest
few days ago. Wow , a nice and interesting way to learn tips or to
use ur imagination to take picture...
I'm an powershot G1 owner from Belgium and I hope to submit soon
some pics to participate.
I had a look a the gallery and some ppl pics are really amazing...

Laurent
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
Steve
http://www.pbase.com/steveyau/
 
Steven Yau said:
The Digital Rebel comes with Photoshop Elements 2.0

Steve
Lee Fly said:
Gayle said:
Gayle
thefly said:
I see several people using a frame and dropped shadow. Can I ask
what program is being used to create these?

--
Lee

http://public.fotki.com/leefly
Click to expand...
--
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gayle_knowles/
Click to expand...
Thanks Gayle,

I have that on my Christmas wish list.

Lee
--
http://leefly.fotki.com
Click to expand...
--
Steve
http://www.pbase.com/steveyau/
Click to expand...
Well... I have been a little naughty this year and do not think Santa is going to bring me one of those.

Lee
--
http://leefly.fotki.com
 
Well I have to admit I thought Don's challenge 44 was a little off the wall, but it was a fun thing to do at the end of the day!

After the impromptu Bear and Boy pic I had to do some serious thinking about where I could take my son's stuffed toys and photograph them. I had a rat in one pocket, a bat in the other, and a rather amusing floppy reindeer that was my constant travelling companion for a over a week.

I had a few ideas, but moments to do things outdoors come and go in the rather busy schedule I seem to have at the moment. I knew I didn't want to do just another studio shot this time around.

One weekday I woke up to a hard frost and a lovely misty morning. On my way to work I took a detour along by the river - always a scenic location that I really should spend more time at I guess.

The mist is always gorgeous as it lifts off the water. Almost spectacular when the sun starts to burn it off. I parked the car up and wandered along the towpath.


  • The view from behind -

  • The view in front -
I wandered along towards the locks where I found a small landing platform with the posts sticking up a few feet.

A perfect place for a rat I thought.

The frost made it a bit dangerous actually and in retrospect it would have been an easy place to slip and fall in to the icy cold water. Or worse than death perhaps I might have dropped my 10D overboard :{

I placed Mr Rat on the post and fired off about 10 pics with different viewpoints and zooms. Here is the untouched unprocessed image except for resizing for web:-



And of course this is how it ended up:-



As you can see from the untouched pic, all that mist made for a low contrast unsaturated image and so the mono conversion was an easy choice to make. But the mist also made the DOF work in a lovely dreamy way.

I really should have done a few shots with some fill in flash to give Mr Rat a bit more detail and a sparkle in his eyes. But it was cold and I was in a hurry at the time so I brought the detail out as best as I could in post processing. All my 10D stuff is shot in RAW and then processed in C1LE before passing to Photoshop.

I used Photoshops channel mixer to get the balance right for the overall scene, but Mr Rat still looked a bit dull. So I copied and pasted him from the colour original and mixed the channels differently to get him looking right. Then I masked the background out and dropped him and the post into the scene.

After flattening the image I did a bit of levels followed by some dodging and burning to get a bit more contrast into the image. The detail on the post is a long way from the original!

Notice the sky? Well all that mist made it really washed out, so I added a subtle graduation from top to bottom. It made all the difference.

Finally, remembering how cold it was I had to give a slight tint of blue for atmosphere and added one of my standard technique borders to finish.

I was pleased with the pic, and thanks to everyone who've enjoyed it also. I hope the talk through above gives a vague idea of how a typical workflow on an image can change something for the better. Nothing I've done is really outside of the traditional darkroom techniques that would be used when making a print from a negative. And although it's obvious PS work has been done, most people wouldn't know how much or how long it took.

For those of you who will be upgrading from P&S to DSLR's you'll probably find that you do more post work than you presently do. But I also think you'll enjoy it more and get better results for it.

If you've read this far then phew, well done!

Regards

--
iso3200
----------
http://www.imageattic.net/gallery
 
Thanks for your explanation Iso. I always like hearing about your photos and how they come about and this one particularly interested me. There is a lot more post processing in it than I had thought, and most of the stuff you did, I wouldn't have a clue where to even start! But it definitely shows attention to detail.....something I have to be more aware of with my own pics.

After this past weekends shoot I am seeing the limitations of the A70 and looking forward even more to my 300D. Large expanses of bright blue sky here makes for large expanses of digital noise, even after using Neat Image. I had heaps of ideas, none of which turned out as I wanted and so far I have uploaded 2 pics which I'm not happy with. One of them I drove 2 hours each way to shoot, but it was such a beautiful day spent with my husband (and no kids!) that is seems not to matter anyway. The wind farms were a spectacular sight, clean white structures against the very blue sky. rolling green hills and a beautiful coast. But the photos just don't do it justice.

Back to the drawing board.........

Gayle
iso3200 said:
Well I have to admit I thought Don's challenge 44 was a little off
the wall, but it was a fun thing to do at the end of the day!

After the impromptu Bear and Boy pic I had to do some serious
thinking about where I could take my son's stuffed toys and
photograph them. I had a rat in one pocket, a bat in the other, and
a rather amusing floppy reindeer that was my constant travelling
companion for a over a week.

I had a few ideas, but moments to do things outdoors come and go in
the rather busy schedule I seem to have at the moment. I knew I
didn't want to do just another studio shot this time around.

One weekday I woke up to a hard frost and a lovely misty morning.
On my way to work I took a detour along by the river - always a
scenic location that I really should spend more time at I guess.

The mist is always gorgeous as it lifts off the water. Almost
spectacular when the sun starts to burn it off. I parked the car up
and wandered along the towpath.


  • The view from behind -

  • The view in front -
I wandered along towards the locks where I found a small landing
platform with the posts sticking up a few feet.

A perfect place for a rat I thought.

The frost made it a bit dangerous actually and in retrospect it
would have been an easy place to slip and fall in to the icy cold
water. Or worse than death perhaps I might have dropped my 10D
overboard :{

I placed Mr Rat on the post and fired off about 10 pics with
different viewpoints and zooms. Here is the untouched unprocessed
image except for resizing for web:-



And of course this is how it ended up:-



As you can see from the untouched pic, all that mist made for a low
contrast unsaturated image and so the mono conversion was an easy
choice to make. But the mist also made the DOF work in a lovely
dreamy way.

I really should have done a few shots with some fill in flash to
give Mr Rat a bit more detail and a sparkle in his eyes. But it was
cold and I was in a hurry at the time so I brought the detail out
as best as I could in post processing. All my 10D stuff is shot in
RAW and then processed in C1LE before passing to Photoshop.

I used Photoshops channel mixer to get the balance right for the
overall scene, but Mr Rat still looked a bit dull. So I copied and
pasted him from the colour original and mixed the channels
differently to get him looking right. Then I masked the background
out and dropped him and the post into the scene.

After flattening the image I did a bit of levels followed by some
dodging and burning to get a bit more contrast into the image. The
detail on the post is a long way from the original!

Notice the sky? Well all that mist made it really washed out, so I
added a subtle graduation from top to bottom. It made all the
difference.

Finally, remembering how cold it was I had to give a slight tint of
blue for atmosphere and added one of my standard technique borders
to finish.

I was pleased with the pic, and thanks to everyone who've enjoyed
it also. I hope the talk through above gives a vague idea of how a
typical workflow on an image can change something for the better.
Nothing I've done is really outside of the traditional darkroom
techniques that would be used when making a print from a negative.
And although it's obvious PS work has been done, most people
wouldn't know how much or how long it took.

For those of you who will be upgrading from P&S to DSLR's you'll
probably find that you do more post work than you presently do. But
I also think you'll enjoy it more and get better results for it.

If you've read this far then phew, well done!

Regards

--
iso3200
----------
http://www.imageattic.net/gallery
Click to expand...
--
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gayle_knowles/
 
Lee Fly said:
Gayle said:
Lee, I use Photoshop Elements 2.
Click to expand...
I have that on my Christmas wish list.
Click to expand...
And if Santa brings you PSE 2.0, I recommend buying a good book as well. It well help shorten the learning curve considerably.

Pay attention to the comments in the challenges and don't be afraid to ask how things were done. You'll learn a lot.

Pops
--
pops.instantlogic.com
'Remember, the wind is your friend!'
 
iso,

Thanks very much for posting all this detail. I for one certainly picked up some more ideas from reading what you did. Well thought out - and well executed. Now, if I can only remember them next time I need them. ;-)

Jim
iso3200 said:
Well I have to admit I thought Don's challenge 44 was a little off
the wall, but it was a fun thing to do at the end of the day!

After the impromptu Bear and Boy pic I had to do some serious
thinking about where I could take my son's stuffed toys and
photograph them. I had a rat in one pocket, a bat in the other, and
a rather amusing floppy reindeer that was my constant travelling
companion for a over a week.

I had a few ideas, but moments to do things outdoors come and go in
the rather busy schedule I seem to have at the moment. I knew I
didn't want to do just another studio shot this time around.

One weekday I woke up to a hard frost and a lovely misty morning.
On my way to work I took a detour along by the river - always a
scenic location that I really should spend more time at I guess.

The mist is always gorgeous as it lifts off the water. Almost
spectacular when the sun starts to burn it off. I parked the car up
and wandered along the towpath.


  • The view from behind -

  • The view in front -
I wandered along towards the locks where I found a small landing
platform with the posts sticking up a few feet.

A perfect place for a rat I thought.

The frost made it a bit dangerous actually and in retrospect it
would have been an easy place to slip and fall in to the icy cold
water. Or worse than death perhaps I might have dropped my 10D
overboard :{

I placed Mr Rat on the post and fired off about 10 pics with
different viewpoints and zooms. Here is the untouched unprocessed
image except for resizing for web:-



And of course this is how it ended up:-



As you can see from the untouched pic, all that mist made for a low
contrast unsaturated image and so the mono conversion was an easy
choice to make. But the mist also made the DOF work in a lovely
dreamy way.

I really should have done a few shots with some fill in flash to
give Mr Rat a bit more detail and a sparkle in his eyes. But it was
cold and I was in a hurry at the time so I brought the detail out
as best as I could in post processing. All my 10D stuff is shot in
RAW and then processed in C1LE before passing to Photoshop.

I used Photoshops channel mixer to get the balance right for the
overall scene, but Mr Rat still looked a bit dull. So I copied and
pasted him from the colour original and mixed the channels
differently to get him looking right. Then I masked the background
out and dropped him and the post into the scene.

After flattening the image I did a bit of levels followed by some
dodging and burning to get a bit more contrast into the image. The
detail on the post is a long way from the original!

Notice the sky? Well all that mist made it really washed out, so I
added a subtle graduation from top to bottom. It made all the
difference.

Finally, remembering how cold it was I had to give a slight tint of
blue for atmosphere and added one of my standard technique borders
to finish.

I was pleased with the pic, and thanks to everyone who've enjoyed
it also. I hope the talk through above gives a vague idea of how a
typical workflow on an image can change something for the better.
Nothing I've done is really outside of the traditional darkroom
techniques that would be used when making a print from a negative.
And although it's obvious PS work has been done, most people
wouldn't know how much or how long it took.

For those of you who will be upgrading from P&S to DSLR's you'll
probably find that you do more post work than you presently do. But
I also think you'll enjoy it more and get better results for it.

If you've read this far then phew, well done!

Regards

--
iso3200
----------
http://www.imageattic.net/gallery
Click to expand...
--
Jim
 
Pops! said:
Lee Fly said:
Gayle said:
Lee, I use Photoshop Elements 2.
Click to expand...
I have that on my Christmas wish list.
Click to expand...
And if Santa brings you PSE 2.0, I recommend buying a good book as
well. It well help shorten the learning curve considerably.

Pay attention to the comments in the challenges and don't be afraid
to ask how things were done. You'll learn a lot.

Pops
--
pops.instantlogic.com
'Remember, the wind is your friend!'
Click to expand...
Pops,

What book do you suggest?

Lee
--
http://leefly.fotki.com
 
Very interesting--thanks much for sharing. Can you say a little more about your technique with the sky? It really makes a difference, but wouldn't have even occurred to me before.

sww
iso3200 said:
Notice the sky? Well all that mist made it really washed out, so I
added a subtle graduation from top to bottom. It made all the
difference.
Click to expand...
 
I re-worked my Wind Farm photo cos I wasn't happy with the colour of the sky, nor the amount of noise in it....I have replaced it on pBase but now there is a line running across the top and down the left side. Can anyone else see it? it's not in the original on my computer and only appeared once I uploaded to pBase.

Gayle

Note to oneself: Never edit photos when extremely tired after a day out.

--
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gayle_knowles/
 
When viewed at original size on Pbase this image looks fine to me. If viewed at large or under, I can see the lines you are talking about.

It's merely because of the more compressed jpegs that Pbase has created for the large, medium and small images.

The other sizes are generated from a script that uses heavy compression which gives these artifacts sometimes.

I've had it happen to me on occasion. It's annoying! I try to make sure that my images at original size fit within the visible screen area of a browser window on a 1024x768 resolution. That way I don't get wound up as I think people see my image the way I intended.

--
iso3200
----------
http://www.imageattic.net/gallery
 
Thanks Iso, I was viewing it at large size....now I can see at the original size the lines are gone.

Ever had a weekend (and a Monday night) where nothing you photograph goes right? That'll be me right now. Another idea didn't happen....and it sounded so good when I thought of it!

Oh well, back to the drawing board yet again. Or maybe I'll just chop the drawing board up and look for inspiration elsewhere.

Gayle
iso3200 said:
When viewed at original size on Pbase this image looks fine to me.
If viewed at large or under, I can see the lines you are talking
about.

It's merely because of the more compressed jpegs that Pbase has
created for the large, medium and small images.

The other sizes are generated from a script that uses heavy
compression which gives these artifacts sometimes.

I've had it happen to me on occasion. It's annoying! I try to make
sure that my images at original size fit within the visible screen
area of a browser window on a 1024x768 resolution. That way I don't
get wound up as I think people see my image the way I intended.

--
iso3200
----------
http://www.imageattic.net/gallery
Click to expand...
--
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gayle_knowles/
 
Steve Walsh said:
Very interesting--thanks much for sharing. Can you say a little
more about your technique with the sky? It really makes a
difference, but wouldn't have even occurred to me before.

sww
Click to expand...
Hi Steve,

Basically I've made a new layer and used the graduation fill tool to make a grad from 100% to 0%. I've drawn this over the sky area. The layer is set to multiply so the underlying layers show through. Then I've changed the opacity of the layer to get the desired level of effect.

Here is a link to a PSD file of the rat pic. It's not the entire workings of river rat, but it shows three layers with the grad on top. This was done is PS7. It should load into 5 or 6 though - maybe Elements 2, could someone confirm this as I don't have it.

When you open the file try changing the opacity of the layer, changing the layer type from multiply to normal or others and you will see how it works.

http://www.imageattic.net/legacy/rat_for_steve.zip

Hope this helps....

iso3200
----------
http://www.imageattic.net/gallery
 
Thanks for giving a bit of in-depth information on your workflow, I found it very interesting to read. You made a good pic great! I too, was surprised to hear the amount of post processing behind it, simply because it's so well done you cannot tell it has been retouched to that degree.

--
Portfolio: http://www.pbase.com/gowan/
Gowan
 
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