Creative post-processing – before & after

[neuroanatomist]

I thought it might be fun to start a thread on creatively post-processed images, shots that are clearly 'photoshopped'. The idea is to at least show the before and after versions, and if you're willing to share the details, an outline of the processing steps to go from the original to the final image.

I'll start the thread off with a few examples, with the processing details for some of them...



This is Boston Light, on Little Brewster Island in the Boston harbor. The only way to get to shots of the lighthouse in 'good light' (sunrise, sunset) is to have your own boat; the tours go out in the middle of the day. This shot was taken from the tour boat on the return trip, at about 4pm on a hot summer day (~90 °F) with a hazy sky - not particularly good light.

EOS 1D X, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM @ 300mm, 1/250 s, f/16, ISO 100

In CS6:

• Duplicated image in new layer
• Filter Gallery > Glowing Edges (width 5, brightness 10, smoothness 6)
• Blended layer as Vivid Light (100% opacity, 50% fill)
• Magic wand selection of sky (tolerance = 20, anti-alias and contiguous)
• Filter menu > Blur > Gaussian blur (radius = 20.0)
• Cropped image (remove about half of water at bottom and and a bit of sky at top)
• Saved as JPG

In the LensFlares app for Mac OS X:

• Added Polaris flare (decrease brightness by ~50%, increase scale by ~50% and adjust rotation)
• Added Gamma Rays flare (decrease brightness by ~80%, adjust aspect ratio ~50% rightward)

Here's the result:

 

[neuroanatomist]

I've seen a few 'tiny planet' images, and a bit of Googling showed that it only took a few steps to create one, the challenge is finding the right source image. I wanted to try something a little different, turned out to be a fair bit of work.

I started with two panorama shots of Boston, from the north bank of the Charles River by the MIT campus. They were taken from the exact same spot, one at night and one during the following day. Each was a 10-shot pano at 70mm in portriat orientation (1D X, 24-70L II), although I cropped them to ~7 shots worth for this, so I could pick ends where the buildings lined up nicely. There were a few boats floating in the foreground, and I cloned those out (including the masts among the buildings). Then I converted both night and day panos into tiny planets, cleaned up the seams, pasted the day planet over the night planet, and applied a gradient layer mask.

Here are a couple of the pano source images and the two assembled pano shots:

This is the result:

"A Day on Planet Boston"

 

[neuroanatomist]

This was a pretty simple one, starting with a couple shots from close to home, taken on a cold morning just after a snowstorm. I used the 1D X + 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, with one shot near the wide end and the other near the tele end.

In CS6, I warmed the images up a bit, then selected successively smaller sections of the images starting with two from the wider shot then the rest from the longer shot, then overlaid them in layers with an Outer Glow effect (black, 75% opacity, softer), to create this:

"Fractals"

 

[neuroanatomist]

There's an Audubon sanctuary near me that's also a working farm. Took a some shots of their chickens, and was making eggs the next morning...that got me to thinking...and these:

...became this:

"Which Came First?"

 

[neuroanatomist]

Fall foliage season in New England is wrapping up, but here's a seasonal effort. Lots of steps in this one, a Google search for 'glass globes in photoshop' will serve up the process.

EOS 1D X, EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/500 s, f/4.5, ISO 160

"Fall is Here"

 

[neuroanatomist]

Another fairly simple one, combining an image 'Little Venice' in Colmar, France taken in August of last year with a shot of the supermoon eclipse taken following month from my back yard. Darkened the sky of the first shot, then layered on the moon twice, with second shot inverted for a reflection, then masked out the appropriate areas to blend the images.

"La Petite Venise"

EOS 1D X, TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II, 2.5 s, f/11, ISO 100

"Blood Moon"

EOS 1D X, EF 600mm f/4L IS II + EF 2x III Extender, 0.5 s, f/8, ISO 6400

"Blood Moon over Little Venice"

 

[neuroanatomist]

I ran across an image in my library of a common merganser coming in for a landing at the mouth of the Merrimack River, and decided to have a play with it.

EOS 1D X, EF 600mm f/4L IS II + EF 2x III Extender, 1/500 s s, f/8, ISO 1600

Did some stretching and twirling of the water in PS, then blended the bird back in:

"Surfing Merganser"

 

[cid]

I like those
Sadly some photos are not visible

 

[neuroanatomist]

Sadly some photos are not visible

Oops, sorry! Hopefully fixed now...

 

[lion rock]

Nice.
Creative, too.
-r

 

[Click]

Cool pictures. I really like the Merganser.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Thanks, all!

Looking forward to some examples from others...

 

[MrFotoFool]

Some photos are still not visible. Most notably, I can see little Venice and I can see blood moon, but cannot see the combined image.

 

[bluemoon]

this one needed a lot of clean up and blurring.

pierre

 

[MrFotoFool]

Photoshop Elements with Nik plugins.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Photoshop Elements with Nik plugins.

Nice!

 

[Jack Douglas]

Neuro, poor me trying to learn the basics. Your photos make me almost feel like giving up ...... but I'll use them as inspiration! Quite intriguing.

Jack

 

[privatebydesign]

Here's one of mine.

It isn't finished yet but is close enough.

The edit consists of 164 different images with the 'best' bits taken from each using a variety of blending modes, masks, and further masks on groups. There are only half a dozen curves and hue saturation layers in amongst it all and the rest is very basic just repetitive.

The image was shot with a 1Ds MkIII and 11-24 @ 11mm f9 for 10 seconds at 100iso. I used one 600-EX-RT and an ST-E3-RT along with an iPhone and CamRanger. The pool doesn't have working lights so that was faked with a blue gel.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Scott, you've lost me - why the dark night photo to begin with?

Jack

 

[Hector1970]

Thanks for starting this thread. I'll post something before and after later. Does anyone do Sean Archer / 500px style portraits. I'd be interested to see a before and after shot of that type of work and roughly what's involved.