[Thagomizer]

Hi All;

This thread is the evil twin sibling to Stupid Camera Tricks. Instead of the use of and emphasis on in-camera skills, this thread is about playing with and manipulating your images in post. The sky's the limit, so feel free to go nuts. If you want to show what you started with and where you ended up with, go for it: we might learn something, which is all to the good. Have fun!

I'll get things started off.

Here's a sequence I put together a few months ago. The heron was shot from some ways away, so it was small in each original shot, making it rather grainy.




I decided to push the abstraction with some aditional filters just to see what would happen:

Film Grain



Pastel



Paint Daubs



Watercolour





Here's another sequence, less manipulated, that I put together today.

As the crow flies



In my black and white darkroom days, I used to do a lot of playing with Kodalith high contrast materials, so I do the same sort of thing now and then in Photoshop using "Threshold."

Here's the sequence I used with a raven shot I took on my recent trip to Yellowknife.

The original shot:



I realized that cropped in closer, rotated and cleaned up a bit, it would make a neat portrait:



That's when i thought about my high contrast darkroom play. I've found that to get a good high contrast image that doesn't look to blocked up or blown out, with enough detail in the right places, it helps to create an intermediate image that's as "flat" as possible. Using a combination of Levels and Shadows and Highlights does the trick. The "flat" image gives you much more leeway in using Threshold than you would otherwise would have working directly with the original image processed for normal print or display. Something that looks like this:



Lets you produce something like this



or this,



or this.



Sometimes I miss the darkroom days. There's something magical about seeing an image emerge in the developing tray that the press of a button just doesn't quite replace. That being said, I can't say I mis the darkroom's attendant toxicity and expense. Experimenting can get expensive when you're working with paper and chemicals. Electrons are much cheaper. So show us how you make the electrons dance!

[geedee]

Very nice experimenting, I do like especially the last three. I do feel just like you about the darkroom days, photography just isn't handwork anymore which I do miss a bit.

[Thagomizer]

Very nice experimenting, I do like especially the last three. I do feel just like you about the darkroom days, photography just isn't handwork anymore which I do miss a bit.

Thanks! I'd tried doing the high contrast "Threshold" thing with dissatisfying results until I tried the 'flat" conversion first.,With this additional stage, I can fine tune stuff quite precisely. I'll have to get back into high contrast imagery again. This thread might be just the push I need!

I used to do a lot of composite printing too, in my darkroom days, combining different images to produce multi layered, symbolic, collage-like pieces. I haven't really gone back to that way of working, not yet at least. I've always liked the work of , whose surreal, dreamlike, composite prints are beautiful, masterly and utterly captivating. Brilliant darkroom technique, the photographic equivalent of multitrack studio recording, but with negatives and enlargers. Lots of hand work there!

Although he uses photography to record (in fact they are usually the only record) his transient, ephemeral, environmental works in-camera rather than through any post processing, I've long admired the playful, creative spirit of Andy Goldsworthy. His work has a directness, simplicity and contemplative spirit that is refreshing and, literally, elemental. Probably the exact opposite of screwing around with stuff on a computer, but there you go! I've never claimed to be consistant...

[Racer X 69]

Another great thread idea Bruce!

Here is one I beat to death on Photoshop. First is the original image.




Then I did a bit of HDR, a couple of different ways.







Then I changed the color of the truck.




Then I tried a filter called soalrize. It almost gives that infrared look. I like how the paint on the truck looks like that color shifting paint that has become popular in automotive finishes these days.





Thinking there has to be a way to create a line drawing from a photo, I played some more.







A little emboss filter, looks more like de-boss.




This one was pretty cool. I always wanted a black truck (this was my first truck, and my last truck was indeed black).




Finally I squeezed the image as though it were PlayDough, squeezed though an accessory that was available for that kid's toy.

[Racer X 69]

Recently I reprocessed a shot I did while building my house.

Finally figured out how to make a photo look like a line drawing.




And then bring back the color.

[Thagomizer]

... push all the sliders to the right.

All the way to eleven?

[Perfessor5646]

All the way to eleven?

After double posting I’ve apparently managed to delete both posts by accident while correcting grammatical and spelling errors. Let me see if I can remember what I did.

[StephenHampshire]

A fair bit going on here....original and "An original work by...."

[Perfessor5646]

Amphitheater seats, bland colors improved (to my mind) by pushing the PP sliders all the way to the right.
Blue Rinse and Car Wash of Horror.

A tip of the hat for The Spinal Tap reference, as well.

[Thagomizer]

After double posting I’ve apparently managed to delete both posts by accident while correcting grammatical and spelling errors. Let me see if I can remember what I did.

That would be going to zero!

[photolady95]

I'm surprised Charliezap and eaglem aren't in here. They like to manipulate they're photos too.

[Apet-Sure]

In my black and white darkroom days, I used to do a lot of playing with Kodalith high contrast materials

Same here. My wife still has a head-and-shoulders portrait of a dog we had early in our marriage that sits on her dresser. It's about 4" x 6", and I mounted it in a shadowbox frame. After decades of photography, it's still one of my proudest achievements.

[Perfessor5646]

I did a bunch of horsing around in PP with self-portraits a couple years ago, including incorporating some props like a skull mask.

[Thagomizer]

Something I put together this afternoon. I suspected that starting this thread might get me thinking along these lines again!

Location, location, location.



And in B&W.



Which started out looking like this:

[savoche]

I'll see if I can get around to upload the original (or one of them) to this HDR image. It's a combination of three exposures pushed through Photomatix, I think.