Post Processing Challenge #4 - Victoria Peak

Sorry for taking a bit of time for this, sometimes business trips don't leave room for real life...
Ok, here is one that really had me working hard to get the most out of it. The result of that effort is now hanging on our 'holiday gallery' in the corridor.

The DNG file (*ist D) is found here (4.5 MB)

A 'straight from cam' TIF file is found here. (31 MB)

The full sized (yes, 3008 x 2008 was the *istD resolution!) JPG version you find here (this should be of limited use, though, as you can see that it is a bit darkish).

And here is the reduced size out of camera JPG:




As I was a bit late in setting the competition theme I suggest to end the entry period on 1800 UK time, Tuesday, 10/5/2011

Hope you have fun!

Prieni

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How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it is quite clearly Ocean. - Arthur C. Clarke
Prieni's PPG page

Here we go...




WB, Brightness, contrast, sharpen, noise etc. from RAW in CS3 then Custom Rotate, vertical perspective control and B&W conversion with Elements9.

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Barrie
Too Old To Die Young

http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/artists/barrieforbes
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189482630@N03/

DNG convert, lens correct, crop. Tickle with Topaz Adjust, colour balance a bit, denoise, resize, sharpen. Bit OTT for my usual taste but was thinking of those cheap canvases that certain shops knock out by the thousand...

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My Version,




For some reason I couldn't get the TIFF or the DNG to download even after signing up !?!

So working on the JPEG, I added a new adjustment layer and upped the contrast and brightness, then a new saturation layer and upped the saturation a bit.
Flattend, Then a duplicate layer created, ran the High pass filter and sharpend it (with sharpen edges) Changed the blend mode to overlay and dropped the opacity and flattend again Then straightend some of the building lines.

Finally duplicated the layer twice, added layer masks to the both duplicate layers and with increasing ammounts of Gaussian blur to remove the jpeg artifacts that had appeared after all the sharpening, but trying not to make it look like it was takien with a tilt and shift lens

Then flatten and saved as a jpeg.

Regards
PaulM

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All cameras are equal but.....
Some are more equal than others

Here's mine



Made a copy layer, then corrected the distortion, and straightened up.

Adjusted the colour hue & saturation levels, then selected the sky and adjusted further with the colours variations settings.

Made a duplicate layer and converted this to mono.This layer had the opacity set to 29%, flattened the layers resized to 800 wide saved as JPEG, and that's it.

Regards

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Colin

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)

I opened the DNG file in Camera Raw, reduced noise, opened it in CS5, copied a layer, straightened using transform>skew, then flattened the image. Adjusted levels, slight curves adjustment, flattened again (it's just the odd way I work), then copied the sky to another layer (feathered 50 pixels), and applied 3.5 pixels of gaussian blur. I then reduced the noise on this layer (the sky seems very noisy in the original file). I copied the building with lots of orange lights in the right foreground to another layer, used a high pass filter at 2.3 pixels, and changed the blend mode to soft light. Then I flattened the image, sharpened it using unsharp mask and resized it.

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Flurble

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Oh no, I got the dates mixed up. Thought it would end today and waited for 1800 UK time. Doh...

Well, here is the judgement...

bforbes - First up is a b&w conversion, interesting. I hadn’t thought of that (but then I’m not very good at b&w). You did lift it a bit but the lower left and right corners are still awfully dark. Interesting effect in the sky with the curly bits. Good try but no cigar.

DigitalCG - A bit over the top it may be but I do like your take. Nice paronamic crop avoiding the problematic corners. I’m often amazed at how much detail there is in a rather dull looking RAW. Well done!

pnjmcc - Pretty impressive considering that you only worked the jpg. (No idea why the download of TIFF and DNG didn’t work for you. I’m sitting at a laptop in a meeting break and had no problems accessing it...
It still is a bit on the dark side but you certainly improved on the original JPG. Seems that you didn’t try treating the bottom corners (or cropping them off).

CoDa - Similar to DigitalCG’s version as far as brightening up and contrast are concerned, but with a different colour style. I do like this but would have stuck with a bit more saturation (see below). The minor niggle is that you have brought out the noise in the sky a bit too much for my taste. Nice crisp look of the buildings, good sharpening. All in all a very good interpretation!

aliengrove - Definitely less noise in the sky here but it also seems to be less sharp in the buildings. This is something, though, that might be more obvious by comparison with the previous entry. I like the brightness and the natural looking sky (I’m pretty sure that it was a bit darker when I took the shot than it appears here).

The good news is that all of you made it to the top five!

It’s quite tricky to pick the winner, I’ll go with DigitalCG this round, most probably the panoramic crop was swinging it this way.
Second goes to CoDa for the colours.

Here is my interpretation, now hanging in the corridor (the grey bits on the sides are, of course, covered by the passepartout). I tried to get the texture out of the dark lower corners a bit more, something that I didn’t see in any of the entries (winning one found another way of getting rid of the dark corners ):




Thanks for taking part and over to you DigitalCG,
Prieni

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How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it is quite clearly Ocean. - Arthur C. Clarke
Prieni's PPG page

Thanks for the Comments Prieni and well done to DigitalCG for the win

Regards
PaulM

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All cameras are equal but.....
Some are more equal than others

Thanks Prieni, congrats DigitalCG! Let's hope there's more entries next time, it seemed a popular idea when it was first mooted....

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Flurble

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Thanks Ralf, sorry I didn't manage an entry, I'm still in HK at the moment and am swamped with PP, I must already have hundreds in the queue.

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Tim
AF - Pentax K5, Sigma 10-20/4-5.6, Tamron 17-50/2.8, Sigma 30/1.4, Sigma 70-200/2.8, Tamron 70-300/4-5.6
MF - Vivitar CF 28/2.8, Tamron AD2 90/2.5, MTO 1000/11
Stuff - Metz 58 AF1, Cactus v4, Nikon SB24, Raynox 150, Sigma 1.4x TC, Sigma 2x TC, Kenko 2x macro TC, Redsnapper 283 tripod, iMac 27”, Macbook Pro 17”, iPad, iPhone 3G
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Feel free to edit any of my posted photos! If I post a photo for critique, I want brutal honesty. If you don't like it, please say so and tell me why!

Thanks Prieni and well done to all entrants - I find all the different approaches to exactly the same file fascinating!

Now need to find something worthy/interesting enough (with a few rough edges) to put up - hopefully have a new challenge posted before the weekend is out.

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