Let's Play #53

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Ben Egbert

Ben Egbert

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Let’s play to change an image. In the old days, this would be a challenging image to process, now with better software, it's not as hard. But you can make it too bright too.

To spice things up, we are requesting that everyone "Play" with the Let's Play photo. Please don't use your normal processing steps as that's not playing, that's just your normal processing. The goal here in this week’s Let's Play is to see just how different from the original photo you can make your edit. So go Play!

Show us how you would render it and please explain the steps taken to get that rendering.

The embedded image is a small jpg of the raw, but use the DNG file for rework.
_D8C3026.jpg


Download this dng to edit in Photoshop or Lightroom.
 

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JimFox

JimFox

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Here is mine, I am running extremely short on time, so all I was able to do was the major adjustments in ACR, and then in Photoshop I ran it through Topaz Clarity - Color and Contrast Boost II.

_D8C3026_dw.jpg
 
Ben Egbert

Ben Egbert

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This is a dark image and I wanted to keep it dark.

In ACR
Set lens correction
WB> as shot
Exposure +75
Cont +6
Highlights -63
Shadow +100
Whites +25
Blacks -17

All other sliders zero

In photoshop

Mark darkest and lightest points using threshold.
In curves set BP at 5,5,5 WP at 250,250,250
Run Topaz exposure
Run Topaz Studio2, Clarity, Dehaze, Detail at 30%
Run Topaz Studio color and contrast boost 2.
Run Topaz brilliant warm

Make an exposure layer and set gamma to .9
Reset BP and WP.
Add vignette.

53 ben.jpg
 
BarryHamilton

BarryHamilton

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I took a quick stab, too. Kept it darkish with soft contrast but brought out some detail. Also cropped a bit into more of a pano. Just went with feel as I made a few adjustments.
121114_BH_fw.jpg
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

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My turn:

Most of the light work was done in LR -

Grad filter for the bottom - Temp +26, Tint +23, Exposure +1.10, Texture and Clarity +17 each.
Grad for the top - Temp +29, Tint +48, Blacks +20, Clarity and Texture +17, Saturation +20

Topaz AI Clear with medium noise reduction
Topaz Restyle with the Cadmium Coating preset and 69% opacity. Below the mountains was masked out.
History brush was used for minor touchups.

53Modified.jpg
 
Nilo Photography

Nilo Photography

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AlanLichty said:
My turn:

Most of the light work was done in LR -

Grad filter for the bottom - Temp +26, Tint +23, Exposure +1.10, Texture and Clarity +17 each.
Grad for the top - Temp +29, Tint +48, Blacks +20, Clarity and Texture +17, Saturation +20

Topaz AI Clear with medium noise reduction
Topaz Restyle with the Cadmium Coating preset and 69% opacity. Below the mountains was masked out.
History brush was used for minor touchups.

View attachment 28770
Click to expand...
I like this one best.
 
Nilo Photography

Nilo Photography

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I like Alan's entry first, second Jim's entry.
I know I couldn't top these entry so I figured I'd do something very different.
I used PS and Topaz to blur the sky using Motion Blur and added a sun flare. Also Highlighted lower part of the mountain & lower area.


53 original.jpg
 
JimFox

JimFox

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AlanLichty said:
My turn:

Most of the light work was done in LR -

Grad filter for the bottom - Temp +26, Tint +23, Exposure +1.10, Texture and Clarity +17 each.
Grad for the top - Temp +29, Tint +48, Blacks +20, Clarity and Texture +17, Saturation +20

Topaz AI Clear with medium noise reduction
Topaz Restyle with the Cadmium Coating preset and 69% opacity. Below the mountains was masked out.
History brush was used for minor touchups.

View attachment 28770
Click to expand...
Hey Alan, I like what you did with the sky. How about cooling down the ground layer a bit? Not to make it totally cold, but just so it isn't quite this warm?
 
AlanLichty

AlanLichty

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JimFox said:
Hey Alan, I like what you did with the sky. How about cooling down the ground layer a bit? Not to make it totally cold, but just so it isn't quite this warm?
Click to expand...
Hmm - I guess I would get to find out how close my notes were since I didn't save the photoshop file. I just made the jpeg and nuked the PS window :rolleyes:
 
Jim Peterson

Jim Peterson

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Very interesting challenge! My final version evolved through several intermediate stages...

1. I used ACR to convert the DNG to a tif file, with adjustments to the white balance (I changed it to Daylight, which cooled it considerably), shadows, highlights, white and black points to get a better tonal balance, and Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance, and Saturation to yield this converted image:

1-53 original_jdp1_after_raw_conversion.jpg


2. I then ran it through Aurora HDR to further balance the tonality, yielding this...

2-53 original_jdp1_after_auroraHDR.jpg


3. On a whim, I decided to try pretending it's a color infrared image, so I did a red-blue channel swap to get this...

3-53 original_jdp1_after_rb_chan_swap.jpg


4. I was kinda pleased with that result (it looks a bit like a shot I made once at Petrified Forest NP, when a monsoon storm was approaching at sunset). But I seemed to want more, so I copied it onto a new layer, adjusted the contrast downward, and invoked Topaz ReStyle. I applied the "Glowing Warmth" preset and then tweaked the colors and tonality a bit. I then tweaked the saturation slightly to get this final result...

4-53 original_jdp1_after_Restyle_Glowing-Warmth.jpg


Incidentally... I'm sorry to have to report that Topaz has stopped supporting their ReStyle tool. It's designated as a 'legacy' product for which they will not sell new licenses nor issue updates, though any existing licenses remain valid. That's really sad... It's a very useful tool in certain circumstances, including processing color infrared images. I sent a note to Eric Yang, their founder (eric.yang@topazlabs.com), expressing my dismay at this development and asking him to consider releasing the current version of the tool (it works just fine as-is) with a free license, so that new folks will still be able to start using it even if the company doesn't want to support it any longer, like Google did for the Nik tools after they stopped supporting them. No reply... 😕
 

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AlanLichty

AlanLichty

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Jim Peterson said:
Very interesting challenge! My final version evolved through several intermediate stages...

1. I used ACR to convert the DNG to a tif file, with adjustments to the white balance (I changed it to Daylight, which cooled it considerably), shadows, highlights, white and black points to get a better tonal balance, and Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance, and Saturation to yield this converted image:

2. I then ran it through Aurora HDR to further balance the tonality, yielding this...

3. On a whim, I decided to try pretending it's a color infrared image, so I did a red-blue channel swap to get this...

4. I was kinda pleased with that result (it looks a bit like a shot I made once at Petrified Forest NP, when a monsoon storm was approaching at sunset). But I seemed to want more, so I copied it onto a new layer, adjusted the contrast downward, and invoked Topaz ReStyle. I applied the "Glowing Warmth" preset and then tweaked the colors and tonality a bit. I then tweaked the saturation slightly to get this final result...

Incidentally... I'm sorry to have to report that Topaz has stopped supporting their ReStyle tool. It's designated as a 'legacy' product for which they will not sell new licenses nor issue updates, though any existing licenses remain valid. That's really sad... It's a very useful tool in certain circumstances, including processing color infrared images. I sent a note to Eric Yang, their founder (eric.yang@topazlabs.com), expressing my dismay at this development and asking him to consider releasing the current version of the tool (it works just fine as-is) with a free license, so that new folks will still be able to start using it even if the company doesn't want to support it any longer, like Google did for the Nik tools after they stopped supporting them. No reply... 😕
Click to expand...

Pretty wild processing ride - interesting result. I share your disappointment with Topaz dropping ReStyle. Happily it does still work but I'd love to see an update as it can be a very powerful tool for some types of image processing. Better yet it would be nice to see that incorporated into Studio 2. They have a module called Color Theme that does some primitive color remapping but nothing even close to ReStyle.
 
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