[lidy]

Hi everybody,

It took some rooting around (I lost a lot of files when my computer crashed some years ago), but here I with a new picture.

It's a bit of a tricky one. I took the picture years ago in the gardens of Huis Doorn, the place where the last German emperor lived until his death in 1941. The gardens have a number of statues and art works, such as the iron horse with cart below. The weather was very sunny and bright that day and I justn couldn't get the iron horse stand out the way I would have liked to. Also, the white notice board is a bit of an eye sore. Hopefully one of you can give it a try: cropping, b/w, whatever it needs, feel free!



The orginal DNG file can be found here:
File sharing and storage made simple
and the JPEG file here:
File sharing and storage made simple .

I hope I've done everything the way it should be done. If not, please let me know.

@tas and @savoche: thank you very much for your help!

I suggest leaving this running for a fortnight, i.e. Sunday 19 January.

Have fun!

[Apet-Sure]

Just messing around with the jpeg file.

[savoche]

Looks good! I found this to be quite a challenging image to work with - and fun

My first attempt was to "cheat" and go b&w. I went via some split toning and luminance adjustment per colour channel in LR before taking it to Nik's Silver Efex, then back to LR for some more contrast adjustments.



I had to try with colours as well... This is the best I can do, I think. The colours might have ended up a bit more autumnal than in the original, though.

[Glenn5995]

[Fluegel]

Spot on, Glenn.

[mariwalt]

I was trying to duplicate Savoche's color rendition. I couldn't. I wonder if it is possible for him to tell us how he did it.

[tuggie76]

Here's mine.

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Last edited by tuggie76; 04-09-2020 at 08:12 AM.

[savoche]

I was trying to duplicate Savoche's color rendition. I couldn't. I wonder if it is possible for him to tell us how he did it.

Me remember what I did last week?

I'll see if I can retrace my steps roughly. In Lightroom I have the history, so: WB; Temp -4, Tint +25. Pulled the hilghlights all the way down, the shadows up 84, blacks down 24. Orange luminance shift -56, green lum shift +47, orange hue shift -9. No noise reduction.

Then I moved to Nik's Color Efex. Much harder to track down what I did there, but I would guess at least adding a layer each of Detail Extractor, Skylight Filter, Darken/Lighten Center, Pro Contrast, and Tonal Contrast, but none with the default values and some with local control points. For the colour bit the skylight filter and detail extractor are probably the most important. Quite often I also add a Remove Color Cast filter to reduce the orange tint of the Skylight filter a bit. Not sure if I did that here.

After that some more adjustments in LR. Tint +25, Highlights -79, Shadows +83, Whites +36, Blacks -17, Green saturation shift -11, Sharpening: Amount 60, Masking 80.

To sum up what I think did the most to the colours, it's mainly the white balance shift, the brightening and desaturation of the greens in the HSL of Lightroom, and the addition of the Skylight filter in Color Efex.

Hope that helps

[mariwalt]

Thanks for our reply. Too complicated for me. I'm not there yet. I'll keep trying.

[noelcmn]

Almost forgot about this one.

[lidy]

Thank you so much for your contributions so far! I know it's a tricky photo and I really appreciate people trying to make it any better! Thank you!

Any other takers? Only a couple of days to go now!

[jmacias]

I hope I'm not too late for this one.

[lidy]

Thanks, guys. You've made it really difficult for me to pick one!

@Apet-Sure, great! I like what you did, but I find the colours a little bit too muted.

@savoche, hahaha, that's also my first go-to solution for tricky pictures: let's give black&white a try! Actually, I like both of your versions. They bring the horse out more than in mine! Thank you very much for describing in such detail what you did in LR; must have a go at it myself.

@Glenn5995, ooow, I'm a sucker for (over)saturated colours! Nice!

@Mariwalt, good try! Very natural! A little bland at the back though.

@tuggie76, out of the 2 you posted, I think I prefer the second one. The only problem I have is that the horse's head is nearly melting into the background.

@noelcmn, interesting approach that first one! Mind telling how you did that?

Okay, my choice is purely subjective, sorry, but the saturated colours in Glenn's version work the best for me here. I feel that it does bring the horse a bit more to the foreground.

Thank you very much everybody for taking part, taking the time and effort. It's very much appreciated!

So @Glenn5995, you're the winner! Will you please host the next challenge?

[Fluegel]

For me Glenn5995 is the winner as well.
He saturated the colors exactly the way I had in mind.

[noelcmn]

@noelcmn, interesting approach that first one! Mind telling how you did that?

The answer is " I have no idea" Probably something like- Convert to Sepia, upped the saturation, upped the blacks and some HDR. I used Photoscape.