Raw Challenge #1

Hi All,

I hope you will like the idea to have that sort of fun.
Please download the RAW provided (see the link below), use your PP skills, imagination, artistic view and upload your modification of it (let's say downsized with longer dimension no longer than 800 pix). It would be also good if you could write briefly what have you done.
Point is to have a "difficult" photo to play with and (if you like idea of this challenge) we will be trying to have more and more challenging RAWs to play with.
Say, this challenge closes on 19th Apr, please upload your jpgs in here.
First RAW to download

have downloaded the pef, I will have a play when i get home. Any hints as to what it is as dont have pef viewer on system in work. Also what can we edit it with , photosho etc?

It is a night shot taken between the buildings at some estate during a snowfall.
As to what software to use - it is up to you, use whatever you would preffer to use.

This would be more meaningful if you posted the original for everyone to see piotro. As it stands it's all a bit mysterious.

John, excuse me if I didn't understand, but my point was, the RAW is the original, whatever jpg I made based on it it doesn't matter as quite possibly other people could have better artistics eye, PP skills, or just a concept what could have been made using this capture. What I possibly could do at the start was to add a brief of what this picture shows, what I've added after foxycce request.
Idea behind this was to have a fun trying to make some nice pic as far as possible out of (ideally not the best source), compare results and see what is possible (and briefly - how) to make, so everybody participating could possibly have chance to learn more.
Is this a bad idea?

Not as such, but we have no idea what it'a all about at the moment. What I suggest is you post a straight copy of the original (no cropping, no sharpening, no adjustments of any kind) so that we can see what people then make of it.

Otherwise there is no way of knowing what has been achieved.

Well, there is link in the first post to download the RAW file, this is the original, without any adjustments. People can download it, make the best (as they think will be) of it.

Yes indeed, but that isn't the point I'm making. Not everyone will want to have a go, but everyone will want to see what people have done. We need an original posting in this thread to give something any alternatives can be easily compared to.

If you don't want to, that's fine, but it will restrict the number of people who will want to try it out.

This time I will be stubborn. Firstly, competition is for people participating in it in the first place, secondly, people just watching hopefully will see a different pictures (if we get enough people participating ), lastly I wouldn't like people participating to try to compare or match to something given at the start (furthermore, this would be jpg created from the RAW, so already adjusted - even if you didin't touch anything you have adjusted it already , you have choosen WhiteBalance preset, which may not be the best for the scene).
Ideally this should be working in the way when people can't see other's work until the end of competition (but I don't think this is technically possible here), then they can compare own levels of PP skills with other people, and hopefully get a though like i.e. "I didn't know I could pull up shadows so nicely, if I knew I could rescue some of my photos before, how to do that?, hopefully she/he has added a brief saying whast has been done with this photo"

No but it is nice to see what the photo is about, now it's a click into the darkness. Also you need a base to compare the photo with, so on unadjusted jpg would be great.

Stefan, I can't see the reason to check what photo is to decide to try this sort of fun. I personally would like to see a very bad source image (it must be a challenge not a polishing a good pic) and it wouldn't make any difference for me if pic shows a train or tomato (does it matter for RAW converter, photoshop/gimp ?).
And again, what will you recognise as unadjusted jpg?, lets say that when taking source picture (RAW format) WhiteBalance wa set up completely wrongly (i.e. was sunlight when picture was taken more at tungsten conditions), if you convert this RAW to jpg, quite probably converter will use this WB setting, so what base to compare does this jpg represent (same as looking at the RAW provided in fact ).
And I still can't understand why the need to compare it to some base, why not use own creativity to make the jpg out of RAW to look as you think will be good?

Well here it is, 10 seconds of work since I'm a photographer not a photoshopper

Original (just to end the discussion with cameras & lightroom 2.3 standard presets)
[IMG]http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk244/Anvh/IMGP2410.jpg[/IMG]

the edit
[IMG]http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk244/Anvh/IMGP2410edit.jpg[/IMG]
Adjusted the white balance, sharpend it and softlight layer at 30%. Just the standard thing I mostly do.

So was this the idea behind it, I can of course make some fairies dance in the light???

If you think it will look good...
Idea is to get people to try own skills and compare the results, find out what else you could achieve with software you use quite offten (of course if you think you know it well, it doesn't apply to you ).

you can do everything but can you still call it a photo afterwards, it's afterall a photoforum not an artforum?

You have just answered your question asked a bit earlier.