RAW Challenge #2

Hi all, sorry for being a day late putting this up - its been raining almost non-stop here the past few days, so the only shot I have for the challenge is out of the 3rd floor window at work looking towards Trafford Park, Manchester. So its a city skyline shot with the houses and trees in the foreground, so lets see what your processing skills can do to a pretty mediocre shot!

Preview image:




The DNG RAW file is 12mb in size shot at 14mp on my GX20 with Sigma 50-150mm lens.


And a few ground rules to make it all crystal

1. You can edit this as much as you see fit - no holds barred, and post an 800x600 max resolution jpg into this thread.

2. You can composite other images of your choosing to enhance the shot if you think its necessary.

3. Entries must be in by Sunday 10th May, The voting didn't work so well on the first challenge, so I think its best to stick with the flow of the other competitions on this forum and judge after the closing date rather than vote. I will try and give good valid reasons for my choices and the winner will need to setup the next challenge.

Any questions, just ask and let me know if I've missed anything!!!

Preview image:




Hi isdky i gave it a go using cs3 and my very limited skills.

I opened up a few individual layers for hue/saturation brightnes/ contrast etc and levels.Finally finishing with unsharp mask.

[IMG]http://i669.photobucket.com/albums/vv54/sanderscapes/_G205786.jpg[/IMG]

My take on this picture. I think it has a lot of potential. If you emphasize the strongest feature. And that is IMO the layered clouds.
I choose the mono treatment, worked with some adjustment layers, masks and levels to bring out the clouds. And cropped to a letterbox format to exaggerate the threatening sky. Finished it of with a duo-tone.




Just count me out on the voting part. It should be enough to see it as an example of what is possible.

Martin.

I've spent the past half hour trying to achieve what Malo just did so no point adding my attempt - I'm very pleased it turned out the way I saw it in my mind even if it didn't turn out like that in PS

Can I ask what you did to get the original DNG file down to 12Mb as all mine are around 23Mb.

I also went for the cranes, not such an extreme crop as epiphet man though.

[IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q105/RR76/conv.jpg[/IMG]

Wow you guys where all fast! 4 entries in the first 2 hours - I'm not going to comment on individual entries - I'll be reserving judging until the challenge closes (but I'm impressed with what has come out so far!).


@sanderscapes: everyone starts with limited skills, try and learn a new tool in photoshop on each photo you edit and soon you'll have a wide set of skills! I've been photoshopping since version 6 and probably only use 1/100th of the tools available in photoshop, and learn new things everytime I use it!

@Malo: I'm going to judge the entries the same way its done in the other forum competitions, so theres no messing around with voting and then vote counting (I was always terrible at maths anywho).

@woodworm: The GX20 DNG files come out of the camera as uncompressed RAW images around 20-27mb per shot - if you open them in bridge/camera raw - you can click save as, select DNG from the drop down box, then check the "use lossless compression" - I wish Samsung would compress the RAWs in camera like the Pentax models do with the PEF format - I think they leave them uncompressed to increase the burst rate for continuous RAW shooting...

Hopefully we'll get a few more entries before Sunday the 10th!

Isdky, yeah great response, I'm happy it is going better than when I started it , will try my (limited) skills as well, but some time later.

[IMG]http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr298/lime501/_G205786.jpg[/IMG]

Silkypix

Quality once again RR I must go back to school

Had to try something different!

[IMG]http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/vv328/MGraley/souvenir.jpg[/IMG]

By the way, I had great difficulty in reading the DNG properly. Irfan failed! Used a trial (ie free for now...) thing called Contenta.
I use Serif PhotoPlus, which is fine once you're past the PEF / DNG stage!

I've been watching this with interest and I wonder how the RAW aspect is relevant? What seems to be happening is an exercise in supplying variations on the original image, a bit like ePHOTOzine.

What would be lost from this exercise if the file provided was a JPEG straight from the camera? Any thoughts?

As I understood the original post, the main idea was to show what could be 'pulled back' (washed out sky / dark shadows) from an original raw image.
Even if the image is presented as a untouched JPEG a great deal of that information will be lost and it becomes as you say like a ePHOTOZINE exercise.

Steve

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v188/Sockpuppetuk/_G20578.jpg[/IMG]

RAW provides more data to play with than JPEG, and more can be done with it before unacceptable degradation. Not all the contributers here will need to take advantage of those possibilities for the particular effects they want, but some may do.

RAW also provides the possibility for finer detail - though that won't be visible at the small sizes posted here unless the image is cropped a lot.

The small size isn't relevant to the dynamic range, for an example of one aspect that is greater with RAW.

So that's the RAW aspect explained. The purpose of the whole challenge is more vague in my mind, but it's interesting anyway!