Seeing as the official FAFEC challenge is taking a break, @Kirky and myself thought it might be an idea to start this up.
The idea is for someone to post a photo (preferably the RAW file) they think can be improved and made into a wall hanger, but they don’t know how, or indeed if it should just be consigned to the recycle bin, never to be seen again!!! This discussion is intended to share tips, tricks, and hints on photo editing, using whatever software you use.
To keep it simple and straightforward, a photo will be posted to start us off. All of you get a chance to do what you feel is right, make a critique, or just say it’s shit and try again, although we much prefer constructive criticism.
Only one pic should be worked on at a time to save confusion with comments. After a couple of weeks the person whose photo is being edited gets to choose their favourite edit, that person then gets to submit the next.
As this is intended to be a discussion on editing, all we ask is that if you submit an edit, please tell us how you arrived at that point. We don’t need War And Peace (unless you want to) but an explanation of what you done, and why will help all of us improve our skills, otherwise it is pointless.
As this is not an official challenge, there are no rules as such. All we ask is that you play nice and “Don’t Be A Dick”
Who knows? If it takes off, the challenges committee might decide to revive the FAFEC? @group-challenges
So to get us started is a pic I personaly think has a bit of potential,
Hurstbourne Viaduct near Whitchurch, taken by @Kirky
Great idea but i think better as a " how the £×@& did you do that" thread. Where people pist a before and after processing with how they did it.Ratger than a challenge. Or they pist a pic for others to improve, or explain how to improve.
This isn’t really a challenge as such, Steve. I just thought having only one pic being edited at a time would be easier. If 10 people all post a pic up it will get very messy with comments.
Is there a way to open up a subforum so we can have several different photos being worked on in seperate places?
A very quick and dirty edit. I removed the green building on top of the viaduct using the spot healing brush after enlarging the image and decreasing the size of the brush. I cropped the image to remove the tree on the right hand side as it annoyed me, and it also helped bring the house into more focus. I then followed THIS simple guide to get the colours and brightness where I wanted them. Finally I used unsharp mask set at 125% with a radius of 1.7 and threshold of 58.
There are obviously better ways, and results. This was just to give an example.
Then after reading the suggestions above I re visited to include the edits suggested above.
So I removed the green house with the erase tool and then masked out the 1st arch and brought down the exposure by 1 stop.
Cropped it a tad. Lot of masking, using radials and linear masks. Increased the shadows, lumin and saturation for windows etc and loads of dodging and burning on the house. Replaced the sky and used basic adjustments before kicking it out. Took about 10 mins.
mmhhh, not bad. But I think it’s a bit muddy still. Needs some contrast and there aren’t really any whites or blacks, just greys. It’s a difficult one for B+W as I don’t think all the elements are there for it. Time to play!!!
I use photoshop for my editing. Most of the image was tweaked in Adobe RAW. The thing about editing others images is that you have no connection to the image or any idea of what you were trying to achieve with the shot. So then you rely on what you like and what you know about composition and controlling how the viewer sees the image. The most important thing about editing is the crop. Triangle and diagonals are always good. Removing and darkening down highlights that compete for attention.
Ah I see, well using basic MS editor this is way outside my ability so I bow to the above. Seeing as I got involved I will offer up the best I could do with the simple MS tool, and I had to remove an arch as I don’t have a touch up or change function to sort that arch!
I use GIMP. One desaturation mode allows you to alter the strengths of the RGB channels individually. I grew up in photography in the 70’s when push processed BW film and high contrast was the vogue. The bridge doesn’t have the separation from the landscape I would like.
A quick select of the background behind the bridge and a slight blurring. Then choose hur/saturation which allows control of Red, blue green and cyan, magenta and yellow. Red an magenta when increased in saturation and also lightened while the opposite done to green and yellow.
Then the dodge/burn tool used to darken foreground and background shadows and midtones, leaving the bridge and house untouched.
A new transparent layer created and given a top to bottom back to white gradient. The opacity was reduced to a point where the sky was darkened but the foreground was unaffected.
exported as a *.webp file to reduce the file size - old space saving habits die hard!
I use GIMP for my editing. It’s free (user supported) software and has been around for years. It’s a sort of Photoshop clone except that it hasn’t got all the AI and wizards of the latest versions. Nor does it have an ever increasing monthly subscription.
Being user supported means there is a large community of people to give advice and many tutorials both written and as videos.
