[chemtech]

Congratulations to all the winners!
Great job of hosting and judging, ghl. All the time and extra effort to make thoughtful comments on each entry is greatly appreciated, especially under the circumstances. Hope, you are feeling much better soon!

[Richard Briggs]

I won! Wow, thanks for that and I echo the other response about effort put into reviews. Not sure what you mean by distracting elements. Could you explain? It maybe because I simply captured the image off screen using Windows 'Snip' so the resolution would be awful.


As well as thanking my Mum, Dad, teachers, wife, kids and everyone I've ever met I'd like to say just what a fantastic little product Smart Photo Editor (SPE) is. It's worth far more than the $30 you pay.


Regards
Richard

[ghl]

Richard,

"Not sure what you mean by distracting elements. Could you explain?"

Sure.

The Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE), an image processing algorithm developed by the U.S. military, to enhance local (small scale) contrast is turned up to 11. Whether you know it or not, that is the processing used by whatever processing path you used in Smart Photo Editor. It is more commonly known as single-frame HDR with photogs.

The radius for the CLAHE processing is either too small, or the threshold is too low, or the variance of light values pre-clahe processing is too broad. One can see this immediatly in the halos of the rooftops and the chimney. But, one can especially see this in the bushes and background tree on the right hand side of the frame as the light (post-process) just doesn't look right. Of course the eye is drawn to the clouds, which are extreme, but also set the tone of your interpretation, so these distracting details pass by quickly.

The processing worked really well for the buildings though, as it brought out details in the elevated walkway -- for example the vertical orientation of the wood siding, which is real -- and it contrasted this nicely with the horizontal siding of the central building. Additonally, the glass in the left building has detail and texture, and the general texture of the left building is well defined along with the light through the windows of the elevated walkway being distinct, as in not blown out nor too dark in value.

That's my take. I really do like it.

[ivoire]

Congrats to Richard on the win and all the participants and thanks to ghl for a great image and hosting the competition

[todd]

That's my take. I really do like it.

Your comments reveal that you are quite the SFE (Smart Feller Editor), so you have me curious, what are you studying?

[Bart]

Congratulations to matlobi, todd, scottwyatt01 and especially Richard Briggs!
And thanks to ghl for hosting an impressively successful contest!

[matlobi]

Thanks ghl, for my first attempt, an honorable mention is very... Honorable!

Thanks! Congrats to my fellow winners, and good work everyone who took part.

[Richard Briggs]

Just to pick up on ghl's comments. One of the cool things about Smart Photo Editor is that you can create your own effects (using their Effects Editor workflow) and then you can, optionally, submit them to a community and they are then made available to one and all. Currently there are over 4000 effects submitted by product owners. And, of course, you can vary the impact of each effect and layer multiple effects over each other so the results are almost infinite and can be unique to you. The downside is you may use 'sub standard' effects. A classic example would be the use of a replacement sky someone has submitted where the new sky has a lot lower resolution than the original picture. Only way is to look at the result. Closely. ghl's comments may relate to that or simply I adjusted a particular layer too much


Richard

[ghl]

Thanks again to everyone that submitted interpretations!

@Todd:
This semester it was mostly all math -- pre-calculus (a waste of time in hindsight), linear algebra, and statistics. Then there were also two classes of independent study in American History.

I used to design hardware state machines for high bandwidth real-time data requirements -- mostly encryption and protocol spoofing. That was long ago, though. Now I work on remote sensing/imaging; mostly LANDSAT TM (thematic mapper) data.

Essentially, generating false-IR color maps and vegetative ground cover analysis from LANDSAT 5/7; though at times I get SPOT satellite data. And at times I'm asked to use the visible bands (RGB) to enhance what can be seen.

My math skills were waning, hence the last semester; needed to knock the rust off!

@chemtech:
Thanks for wishing me well soon. I had an old root canal bust out. Eating popcorn and the tooth splintered into four pieces. Nothing left to grab onto to extract the rest, so surgery was required. I should be able to eat solid food sometime next week!

@Richard
You take my comments too hard! I liked your submission -- that's why you won.
I'm just very used to seeing CLAHE processing in some work I do (see above response to Todd), and as such recognize the artifacts pretty quickly.

Additionally, it might not be a CLAHE based algorithm, but it looks like one. Doesn't matter, really, as it's all good.

[Richard Briggs]

Hi ghl. not taking comments wrong way. Simply that it has concerned me that maybe the tool I use (Smart Photo Editor) is somehow degrading my original shots in terms of quality. So I was really interested in hearing your views. So if, for instance, you'd observed strange artifacts in the image that may be due to the product. For $30 the quality of results amazes me. I'm constantly thinking there must be a catch!


Regards
Richard

[todd]

This semester it was mostly all math -- pre-calculus (a waste of time in hindsight), linear algebra, and statistics. Then there were also two classes of independent study in American History.

I used to design hardware state machines for high bandwidth real-time data requirements -- mostly encryption and protocol spoofing. That was long ago, though. Now I work on remote sensing/imaging; mostly LANDSAT TM (thematic mapper) data.

Essentially, generating false-IR color maps and vegetative ground cover analysis from LANDSAT 5/7; though at times I get SPOT satellite data. And at times I'm asked to use the visible bands (RGB) to enhance what can be seen.

My math skills were waning, hence the last semester; needed to knock the rust off!

Wow that's some crazy cool stuff!! thanks for sharing

[chemtech]

I agree with, Todd!
Glad, to hear you are recovering nicely after your dental surgery. Ugh! I know a few things about that as well.
Take care,
Edith