# My Photoshop challenge for ya



## invisible (Aug 3, 2009)

OK, so I admit I'm a Photoshop zero. I have these two images below, straight out of the camera, and can't find a way to make 'em shine. (I know, the WB was set to shade or cloudy and the horizon on the second one is tilted.)

*The challenge:* if you think you've got what it takes to make these guys (or just one of them) look great, send me a PM with your email addy and *I'll send you the RAW file(s)*. You just need to promise you'll post the results here and also email me the high-res jpg back. 

1.






2.





Thanks!


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## max3k (Aug 3, 2009)

Here goes.


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## invisible (Aug 3, 2009)

That's very nice, about 20 times better than my best PP attempt  

Do you happen to have an uncropped version?


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## max3k (Aug 3, 2009)

sure will email


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## musicaleCA (Aug 3, 2009)

Here's what I did, to the benefit of all:

On import with ACR:

Cooled it down a little, increased fill light by about 40, increased clarity to about 80, and bumped up vibrance a fair bit to bring out the shore's colours. Also bumped contrast up quite a bit. About +3-6 magenta (can't remember exactly how much).

In Photoshop:

1. Hue/Sat layer, colourize, at H 213 S +33 L 0
2. Layer mask the above
3. Paint in with low opacity brush on the water.
4. Once roughly painted, blur the mask with a gaussian blur, large radius, previewing it by Alt-clicking the layer mask.
5. Brush-in some more blue on the water with a very tiny, very low opacity brush.
6. Add a curves adjustment layer.
7. Click the hand icon, drag up the levels on two spots on the rocks where I got decent results (about mid-tone and lights locally on the rocks).
8. Layer mask that.
9. Paint bucket the mask black, and start painting-in on the rocks and shoreline.
10. Blur that.
11. Took the blur tool to give extra blur to the mask in a few places.
12. Hue/Sat layer. Reds S +10. Yellows S +33 L -21. Greens S +16. Cyans S +28. Blues +52.
13. Go back and paint in a little more blue on the first mask of the water, to clean it up and make it a bit less patchy.
14. Flatten the image.
15. Topaz Adjust to give it a bit more punch. (Pretty minor tweaking. Nothing radical.)
16. Very reserved unsharp mask.

...Oh for the love of. Fracking...hell. Photoshop borked and Photobucket is being weird. Gimme a bit while I make sure my colour spaces are in order. Grrrrr.

Edit: Fixed. Heres the result:






And for kicks I threw it through Topaz Clean. I think this looks cool.






Could do with a saturation bump, but meh...


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## manaheim (Aug 3, 2009)

Send me the RAWs, dude.  I'll rock your world!!! 

chris001

at

wickedtiki

.com


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## manaheim (Aug 3, 2009)

Ok.  I did most of my work in ACR, which is actually rare but I didn't think the shots needed that much adjustment beyond it...

So in the first one...

In Adobe Camera RAW...
- Temp 5450
- Tint +1
- Exposure 0
- Recovery 0
- Fill Light 5
- Blacks 0
- Brightness +50
- Contrast +25
- Clarity 0
- Vibrance +57

In Photoshop...
- Smart Sharpen, 75%, 1 pixel
- Blue saturation + 10


I got this...






I'm working on the second one now.


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## manaheim (Aug 3, 2009)

I actually did the same settings on the second one, except I increased the exposure by 1.65 and I increased the saturation of the ENTIRE color range by about 12 points and THEN the blue by about 12-15 more.

I came up with this...






In retrospect I think the whole-image saturation boost was a good thing.  Brings out more of the red in the sand, which is nice and a lovely counterpoint to the blue of the sky.


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## manaheim (Aug 3, 2009)

btw, I didn't bother to fix the horizon as I figured you could do that... and as much as I was tempted to try to crop them, I actually like them the way they are...

*EDIT:* Whoa, I just looked at what music did.    Holy CRAP dude.   BTW, doing more than MAYBE 5-10 points on fill light does some really wonky crap to images.  You have to have a very light touch with that slider.


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## invisible (Aug 3, 2009)

Great work everybody, thanks for spending time on these! Really cool to see everyone's own vision for the PP of the same image.

Michael, I haven't received the jpgs... Would love to have them!

Chris, RAW has saved my butt many times!


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## manaheim (Aug 3, 2009)

No problem, man, glad to do it. I love photoshop challenges. 

You gotta tell us which you like best, btw. My fragile ego demands stroking! (or horrible abusive thrashing... whichever works for you... I'm flexible) 

Oh yeah, and RAW saves me constantly.


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## musicaleCA (Aug 3, 2009)

Manaheim, you're pretty cool. Pretty darn funny on the forums too.

*But your work stinks more than a skunk that's been dead for three days!*

...

Two in one? 

Your JPEGs are in the mail.


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## invisible (Aug 3, 2009)

musicaleCA said:


> Two in one?


He knows I'm easily impressed, is all!


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## Nicholas James Photo (Aug 4, 2009)

MusicalCA and Manaheim - I hate you both, LOL, great work guys


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## musicaleCA (Aug 4, 2009)

Wanna pay me to edit your photos? I will accept ramen noodles or good glass. :lmao:


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## manaheim (Aug 4, 2009)

musicaleCA said:


> Manaheim, you're pretty cool. Pretty darn funny on the forums too.
> 
> *But your work stinks more than a skunk that's been dead for three days!*


 
Fragile ego... shattered...

Life... in shambles...

Must... choke... self... to death... <GASP>



Nicholas James Photo said:


> MusicalCA and Manaheim - I hate you both, LOL, great work guys


 
hehe...



musicaleCA said:


> Wanna pay me to edit your photos? I will accept ramen noodles or good glass. :lmao:


 
mmmm... noooooooooooooooooooooooooodles.

You know a buddy of mine used to take the seasoning packet and set it aside, boil the noodles, drain them, then melt in 1/2 stick of butter and pour the seasoning back over them.   TOXIC.


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## UUilliam (Aug 4, 2009)

No idea how it is so... Palleted?
looks more like a painting cause it is so smooth but i had sharpened it etc... never done anything to soften it at all so no idea...
urgh.. Peano is too good


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## UUilliam (Aug 4, 2009)

manaheim said:


> You know a buddy of mine used to take the seasoning packet and set it aside, boil the noodles, drain them, then melt in 1/2 stick of butter and pour the seasoning back over them.   TOXIC.



I Get the Super noodles, Take the little powder out
Snap the noodles into 4 pieces allowing it to cook quicker and none of the annoying long strands.
Pre heat the pan to boil (gas mark 3 although i cook electric)
(while it is boiling i
Get loads of spices , Red chilli, Black pepper, Salt, Cayan pepper and what ever else i can find and shove it all in the water(keeping some aside)
put a Chicken Stock cube in with the water for about 5 mins
(some water has drained by this time)
(gas mark 2.)
Put the quartered noodles in and pour some more powder in on the noodles 
Put the lid half on / half off for 5 mins
(gas mark 0.5 - 1) Put the lid on full so the noodles marinate in the spices and the water drains more
after about 5 more minutes i take the noodles and drain any water in it, Try the noodles... IF they are too spicy I add a little milk and mix until the noodles soak up the milk then eat 
then my tounge is pure yellow afterwords... = not healthy


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## KmH (Aug 4, 2009)

For hire, my rate is $25 per 1/4 hr hour. 1/2 hour minimum.


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## Peano (Aug 4, 2009)

A tropical interpretation ...


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## invisible (Aug 4, 2009)

Peano said:


> A tropical interpretation ...


Holy cow!


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## manaheim (Aug 4, 2009)

Wow, Peano... I'm... _impressed_.

That's just bizarre.  It never even occurred to me to adjust the colors and light like that.


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## musicaleCA (Aug 4, 2009)

Good point. They're all different interpretations. I like what you did Peano, but I think those rocks deserve more detail and colour. 

(And with manaheim, I'm impressed too. Nicely done on the water; you're less lazy than I am.)


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## manaheim (Aug 4, 2009)

I pretty much rock everyone's world on several levels.

Really, you're all just _extremely _lucky to have me as part of your lives.


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## invisible (Aug 4, 2009)

manaheim said:


> Wow, Peano... I'm... _impressed_.


You're just "impressed"? I think  that your ego  using your own words  has just received a dose of (unintended) "horrible abusive thrashing" 

(I'm joking, of course. If that's what happened to manaheim's ego, imagine what just happened to mine )


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## manaheim (Aug 4, 2009)

invisible said:


> You're just "impressed"? I think that your ego  using your own words  has just received a dose of (unintended) "horrible abusive thrashing"
> 
> (I'm joking, of course. If that's what happened to manaheim's ego, imagine what just happened to mine )


 
I WAS ACTUALLY TRYING TO HOLD BACK THE TORRENT OF PAINFUL AND HURTFUL EMOTIONS, BUT SINCE YOU HAD TO DRAG IT OUT OF ME!!!!

IM DYING INSIDE!!!

DYING!!!


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

>sob sob sob<

>weep weep<


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## Peano (Aug 4, 2009)

manaheim said:


> Wow, Peano... I'm... _impressed_.
> 
> That's just bizarre.  It never even occurred to me to adjust the colors and light like that.



Thanks. I do a lot of bizarre stuff ... mostly off the forums. :albino:


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## musicaleCA (Aug 4, 2009)

There there manaheim. At least your work doesn't stink as bad as a garbage truck that empties the dumpsters at a McDonald's...

...on second thought...


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## manaheim (Aug 4, 2009)




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## Big (Aug 4, 2009)

manaheim said:


> invisible said:
> 
> 
> > You're just "impressed"? I think that your ego  using your own words  has just received a dose of (unintended) "horrible abusive thrashing"
> ...


Dude, your so weird....


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## NateS (Aug 4, 2009)

Here's my take.  Basically it's seperate color control points on the sky and water.  Then adjusted the curves on the rocks (selection control point), then added a bunch of tonal contrast (via Nik Color Efex Pro).  All done in Capture NX2 on the jpeg.


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## terryc967 (Aug 5, 2009)

here is what I came up with


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## UUilliam (Aug 5, 2009)

Peano said:


> A tropical interpretation ...


oh wow... you so need to share how you did that...


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## musicaleCA (Aug 5, 2009)

Nate: How'd you much compression did you give that poor image? There's JPEG artifacting, and it's especially visible in the water by the shoreline. >.< (That or Capture NX craps it's pants, so-to-speak, when resaving JPEG's faster than Adobe's compression algorithms.)


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## Peano (Aug 5, 2009)

UUilliam said:


> oh wow... you so need to share how you did that...



The main color changes were made in these five layers. You can see from the masks which parts of the image the various layers were affecting.


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## manaheim (Aug 5, 2009)

You guys are putting waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more work into those than I did. 

I think I get the prize for best result with least effort.


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## invisible (Aug 9, 2009)

Thanks again everybody for participating. Of course there are no winners and losers here. Still, I wanted to tell you that for my website I've chosen the following edits:

Photo #1: the edit provided by *musicaleCA*





 Photo #2: an edit provided by someone from another forum






Thank you very much everybody for helping me out!


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## mpasq66 (Aug 16, 2009)

Beleive me, I'm new and I know it sucks !   






As is this one:






My sat.'s seem to be different from one program to another...


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## thekyle (Aug 20, 2009)




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## artizenhdr (Aug 26, 2009)

Sorry guys i didn't use Photoshop but here are my results.

Steps

1. Using the small source (800x531) file loaded into Artizen HDR.
2. Using the Dramatic Tone Mapping Filter i exposed the darker areas.
3. Then finally used the Color Filter adjust Saturation, Red Hue, Green Hue and Teal Hue as well as tweaked the Temp of the photo to be a bit more afternoony 

So here is my result. ​



​


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