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Fortnightly Challenge - Jan 10 thru Jan 21 - Topic: Mechanical
- Thread starter JohnMC
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Maxx Bike Phase II Looking for a Ticket
I wanted to move Maxx's bike out of the racing environment. I took some photos of downtown Tacoma at an angle that would not mess the of feel perspective. It's a lot of free style stuff that I get into when working a difficult assignment, so it would be pointless to post a screenshot of my layers. I know what I did, but it's hard to explain...
I know you can't pop a wheelie on a damp street, but it didn't look right with both wheels on the street. Compromise.
Dale
(I changed my mind)
I wanted to move Maxx's bike out of the racing environment. I took some photos of downtown Tacoma at an angle that would not mess the of feel perspective. It's a lot of free style stuff that I get into when working a difficult assignment, so it would be pointless to post a screenshot of my layers. I know what I did, but it's hard to explain...
I know you can't pop a wheelie on a damp street, but it didn't look right with both wheels on the street. Compromise.
Dale
(I changed my mind)
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As I said before....... The colors and texture on old machines can be rich butt often get lost "on film." I like these compositions but wanted to see more texture and color. As I started to play, I liked what was coming out as I over emphasized things. I did everything in PSE.
In the first one, I wanted just to bring up more of what was there. I imagined what I might see if I was looking at the artifact in good diffuse light. Here is what I did (and hopefully Dale's teacher would give me an"A" because of the detailed recording
): Using levels, I adjusted the green and blue just a bit (0-251 and 0-249 respectively) to bring out a little more of the rust and patina. Then I darkened highlights 10%, increased midtone contrast 10%, and applied the equalize adjustment filter.I tried the same thing with the second but it still did not work so I went further knowing it would look not real. I tried to walk a line of not making it look cartoonish. For this one I made the same adjustment to the blue and green. I adjusted hue and saturation to the following values: hue = 0, saturation = +60, lightness = -10. I then applied the equalize filter, darkened highlights by 4% and increased overall contrast 50%.
This is the first time I've done this much PP so I am interested in feedback on my efforts.
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Well to start with - "Great minds think alike". I did these yesterday - and basically did the same as you but using PS with the Hue and Saturation tool - I also upped the contrast and saturation I also used the selective colour tool for more red, green and blue. I went a bit extreme - just for the fun of it. I slightly cropped the one on the right and added sepia to the one on the left.
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This was really hard to adjust without it looking too artificial. I wanted to get some decent blue into the sky but it was difficult because of how overcast it was and the natural grey/green tinge. I did the best I could in about 30 minutes. I cropped to try to give some sense of the height of the act and of the planes falling into the frame.
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I like them both. While I went for something that looked not real, I imagine the artifacts actually looking like the colors in your rendering.
As I said before....... The colors and texture on old machines can be rich butt often get lost "on film." I like these compositions but wanted to see more texture and color. As I started to play, I liked what was coming out as I over emphasized things. I did everything in PSE.
In the first one, I wanted just to bring up more of what was there. I imagined what I might see if I was looking at the artifact in good diffuse light. Here is what I did (and hopefully Dale's teacher would give me an"A" because of the detailed recording
I tried the same thing with the second but it still did not work so I went further knowing it would look not real. I tried to walk a line of not making it look cartoonish. For this one I made the same adjustment to the blue and green. I adjusted hue and saturation to the following values: hue = 0, saturation = +60, lightness = -10. I then applied the equalize filter, darkened highlights by 4% and increased overall contrast 50%.
This is the first time I've done this much PP so I am interested in feedback on my efforts.
Cool. Thanks for messing with these and posting. I'd say on the first one the reality of what I saw was somewhere in between what I originally posted and what you did. I think it looks great though. The second one is obviously a good bit over saturated but I think it makes it very interesting. It definitely catches your eye. Like I said I'm not really a PS guy. My first instinct on subject matter like this is to go black and white but there are some beautiful colors in the rust. I also tend to vignette the exposure and under saturate to give it a more antique feeling but that isn't very "creative". Thanks for the post and for the ideas.
I have to say...the one on the left looks amazing. It looks way better than my original shot. It really jumps out at me when I look at it. I'm going to try to replicate what you did as best I can in Aperture. The one on the right is very interesting too. I like the crop much better than my original and will be "borrowing" that as well. The colors are a bit extreme for me. I like it and think it makes it interesting but I guess I'm a bit more of a realist. That's probably way a lot of my shots are a little flat because I'm always afraid of over saturating. But it definitely works with a lot of shots. Great job.
Here's another shot from the canal lock. This is the raw image, nothing has been done to it. I'm not really sure about it. It wasn't one of my favorites but the background of the canal and trees I really like. To me it draws me down the canal. The foreground of the gears though I don't think are right. Maybe I was too close to the gears. I offer it up to the PS experts though to see if there is anyway to improve it.
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OK. Here are my inspired updates to these two pics. Thanks to both of you guys I think they look way better than my originals, though they are not as good as both of yours. I did everything in Aperture. I'm not anti PS, I have CS3, it's just I like the workflow in Aperture so much that I never go into PS anymore. I have very little time to mess with photos so Aperture has been great. But this weeks challenge has taught me a few things and reminded me to slow down with the post processing.
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I think your updates are great - my intention was to create an extreme look (well in one of them at least).
Normally I just go for what I saw and try to recreate it. Therefore I tend to do very little PP work but do enjoy a bit of tweaking.
This has a lot of potential. There is a lot of detail in the midtones of the file. I made adjustments to the midtones in Levels and Brightness and Contrast to bring up detail without sacrificing the natural feel of the picture.
Dale
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These look good. The color and texture of these artifacts is pretty complicated. They are hard subjects to process.
Okay. I feel really good right now. Dale - you know that I respect your work a lot. I did this before I saw what you did. I wanted to make this look as natural as possible but with greater richness of color. The background in the original is too washed out for my taste and was a distractor. For this one I pulled in the reds and greens just a little in levels. I then lighted shadows 17% and darkened highlights 34%. I then pulled in the RGB levels. The end product feels much more like similar artifacts I have seen in person. Also, the background feels like it works with the artifact rather than against it.
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So I discovered that shooting a bike is even harder than shooting the saxophone. At least the sax stays in one place. It's hell running and shooting at the same time.
Respect - great shot.
Thank you. I posted before I finished playing. There is a composite B&W/color I added.
So I discovered that shooting a bike is even harder than shooting the saxophone. At least the sax stays in one place. It's hell running and shooting at the same time.
My bike is so filthy I would never let you folks see it...
There is a Motion Blur going on there in the B&W version and it works well. What tool did you use to select the bike?
Dale
Well...... I got tired of riding steel and aluminum, so I decided to get an all carbon fiber. I'm pretty picky about some stuff and it took a full year of trying this and that bike before I decided on the Giant TCR-C. Well then in Aug. '08 I was struck by a truck while riding. I am healing but I was not going to trust the frame of the bike. So, this past summer I got the Giant TCR-Advanced. It's a great ride.
Oh. Wait. That's not what you meant.
I used PSE to cut out all of the grass behind the bike, applied the blur to the grass and then put them back together. The color and the B&W/color composite have exactly the same blur. The only thing I did in the composite was to change the color. One of the things I like best about the composite is the way the blue on the bike stands out.
I don't think I've ever seen such a clean 40/50 year old typewriter.
I like your composition a lot. It is very similar to many of mine. I was not, however, able to find a visual focal point. I added some vignetting to bring the eye to the center bottom third.
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I much prefer the colour version - it looks more realistic to me. It's simple but very effective. I like that in your work.
Well...... I got tired of riding steel and aluminum, so I decided to get an all carbon fiber. I'm pretty picky about some stuff and it took a full year of trying this and that bike before I decided on the Giant TCR-C. Well then in Aug. '08 I was struck by a truck while riding. I am healing but I was not going to trust the frame of the bike. So, this past summer I got the Giant TCR-Advanced. It's a great ride.
Oh. Wait. That's not what you meant.
Nice bike. Oh, wait. Didn't one of you guys needle me for having a $62 monopod?? I'm sure it's great transportation, but my Huffy came from a 2nd. hand store. Cost maybe $20...
Dale