Okay...you're not going to stop at just posting the image...you are
going to tell us what you did, aren't you?
Isabel
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipets/?yguid=11497599
I wasn't going to explain anything since the threadmaster hadn't been heard of for a whole week. But you called, here it is:
The shot is in really bad condition noise-wise, and working with the original, even with all the tweaking I did, it doesn't look good in detail. It may need further or different anti-noise work.
Also, I would like to say that through cunning lurking, I learned all I needed to know from all previous posters, so the credit, if any, belongs mostly to them, without whom I could not have succeeded one iota. If the shot now looks better, it is mostly also because it had been downsampled, so the rough detail is not readily visible.
As you look at the Layers pallette, the lowest layer(1) at 100% was processed with Neat Image Demo 1.1. Then converted to Lab color. All subsequent steps were carried out in Lab color.
The original image was layered(2) at 20% opacity on top to re- introduce some noise to give it a more natural appearance.
The third layer(3) is a cyan partial left gradient to tone up the left dark red side.
The next layer(4), a contrast mask(background copy inverted, desaturated, overlay mode, then maxed gaussian blurr I think, then tuned to 13% opacity. Perhaps not essential.
The next Hue/Saturation layer(5) is attacking the narrow band red background, total de-saturation.
The next up Hue/Saturation-layer(6) is slightly desaturating narrow-band red faces and at the same time saturating the yellow halo a touch, just for fun.
The next up curves layer(7), (one control node) is giving light substance to the entire picture.
The next up color balance layer(8) is neutralising the reddish suit to black and takes out the remaining yellow of the background.
The top curves layer(9) is upping the black suit a touch, two nodes with a small belly in the dark, held back from the center to white.
Recapping the most essential layers: Bottom layer(1)(Neat Image), Hue/Saturation layer(5),curves layer(7). All the others are smaller tweak layers.
bernd
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Bernd Taeger
