PP Challenge #9 - Sunrise over Atlantis

MRRiley · 10-26-2009, 03:52 PM

Welcome to PPC#9.

This is a sunrise shot from our cruise ship looking towards the Atlantis Resort on Nassau, The Bahamas. The data is there (mostly in the .PEF) but will take a lot of TLC to bring it out and make this image shine. Best of luck to everyone! Extra points for removing "distracting elements."

Challenge will end at 7PM U.S. Eastern on Monday, 2 November (extension possible if insufficient entries by deadline).

Original PEF: IMGP0740.PEF

Full size JPEG: IMGP0740_1.jpg

The license will be...

I retain full copyright on the original image and files. Members of Pentax Forum are granted full authorization to copy the linked files in order to alter or manipulate said image for the purpose of entering the Post Processing Challenge. They are also granted permission to use the resulting image for their own personal, non-commercial purposes. Original EXIF, including the original copyright, must be maintained in all files created for this competition and subsequent personal use as granted above.

atupdate · 10-27-2009, 07:51 AM

Post Processing with PSP X from the JPEG

1) I started by balancing the bright and dark areas by (a) duplicating the layer, (b) desaturating the duplicate, (c) changing the duplicate layer to a negative image, (d) set the blending mode to overlay with 100% opacity (opacity varies from image to image) e) merge duplicate layer down

2) Clarify adjustment at strength 5

3) Unsharp Mask (USM) @ radius: 50. strength: 15 and clipping: 3

4) Duplicate Layer and apply second USM treatment @ radius: 0.30. strength: 300 and clipping: 3 - Desaturate, Soft Light Blend Mode and 95% Opacity

5) Levels adjustment layer with blackpoint set to 7 and gamma bumped to 1.29. I also went to the blue channel and bumped the gamma to 1.15

6) Darkened the sky using the technique from this tutorial Move the Light - Tutorials

7) Curve adjustment layer - slight s-curve to darken the blacks and bump the mid-tones.

8) Merge All

9) Straighten

10) Crop

11) Resize

12) Unsharp Mask (USM) @ radius: 0.75 Strength: 75 and Clipping: 0

Tim

mithrandir · 10-27-2009, 11:24 AM

I decided to treat this as what it was -- a record of Departing Memories
-- thus the dreamlike quality.
Imported to Lightroom 3.0 Beta 1
Straightened
Cropped
Exported to Dynamic Photo HDR as 11 separate exposures using my 1 shot HDR workflow.
Combined into one output file in Dynamic Photo HDR using Smooth Compressor process.
Exported to Paint.Net
Converted in Paint.Net to a Water Color look.
Curves, Levels, and Sharpness applied in Paint.Net.
Resized and saved as jpg in Paint.Net

SWEngineer · 10-27-2009, 10:53 PM

Nothing too exiting:
Lots of mucking around in LR to get the color right, get a bit of shadow detail, and minimize the noise by desaturating most of the colors (only orange & yelllow adding much to this image). Ultimately I went with 2 exposures, one for the sky and one for overall.

Crop & Export to PS. Stack sky exposure on top set to softlight, 50%. Clone & heal a couple 'distractions' away. Dodge & Burn on a blank softlight layer. Merge, USM for local contrast enh. Select the darker clouds and a ran denoise filter. Two masked curve layers to enhance the LR sea and the upper most clouds. Add a slight vignette. Size for web & lightly sharpen. Done.

*Ash* · 10-28-2009, 06:38 PM

Mike, this is a challenging challenge

My contribution, limited by my own lack of creativity, is thus:

*xs400* · 10-28-2009, 07:19 PM

Here's mine. I used PS Elements clone tool, cut and paste, and healing brush to complete construction of the hotel. Then it was crop and straighten the image. This was then followed by cut and past to move the bird. For the color, I used levels, contrast, hue and saturation more times than I can count. I also used PSE to denoise and sharpen.

SWEngineer · 10-28-2009, 08:13 PM

Frank - Great idea moving the bird. Wish I'd thought of it.

*Ash* · 10-28-2009, 08:30 PM

Great stuff Frank.
Love your work...

MRRiley · 10-29-2009, 09:08 AM

Looking real good so far. There is not doubt that this is a challenging image to work with (which is why I chose it... LOL).

Mike

p.s. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing wrong with submitting multiple entries. If you have the time and energy to do multiple interpretations, by all means go for it. Continued tweaks and updates are ok with me as well... all the way up to the deadline.

ozlizard · 10-29-2009, 11:09 PM

This was not an easy one! Thanks Mike....

mithrandir · 10-30-2009, 12:45 AM

I decided that one approach was not enough. This version was accomplished in Lightroom using a High Key Preset:

And this version was accomplished using Lightroom and Dynamic Photo HDR. In Lightroom I used a series of presets I developed to create 9 separate exposures based on set black and white points, vibrance, luminance, saturation. Next they were merged in Dynamic Photo HDR where brightness, contrast were adjusted and a custom curve was applied.

*Ash* · 10-30-2009, 01:26 PM

Got another entry as well...

*Ash* · 10-30-2009, 01:27 PM

And one more for fun...

mithrandir · 10-30-2009, 02:06 PM

Originally Posted by Ash

And one more for fun...

Wow Ash, Looks like the ideal tourist location, a black hole!

*xs400* · 10-30-2009, 09:05 PM

Here's a second entry from me. I used my original entry as a background and added a boy looking out as a new layer. (I got the pic of the boy off the internet.) I flattened the image, converted it to B&W, followed by adding the sepia tone and grain. Lastly I added vignette blur to the edges.