Orphi's Photos Part 2
To continue this thread I'll deal with Orphi's photo of a fallen tree stump.
As I still can't get on with the Gimp I'll use Paint Shop Pro, everything I do here is transferable except for the adjustment layer which the GIMP does not possess. It can still do it it just has to be added directly to the image rather than floating on top.
Okay first off composition-wise the shot's fine, the angle and position all lead up the tree and it looks good. So why so flat, again overexposed, it's also a little bleached from the exposure; the soil is the same level as the trunk, everything's in focus; and there's also a cyclist just in shot whom I'll ignore. If I had more time I'd clone her out.
Okay first off the overexposure, in this instance I'm going to keep the tree at the same exposure level and just darken the remainder of the shot. Sadly PSP doesn't allow masks on adjustment layers so I need to create a duplicate of this background as another layer.
Having done so I'm going to adjust the exposure in PSP this is Highlight/Midtone/Shadow; if stuck the basic Brightness/Contrast is also available.
By default it's 0/50/100. I want to make it darker so I'll up the first setting to 20, the highlights are still good, but the midtones need a little tweaking I'll drop them to 44. So 20/44/100.
However I want this to apply to everything except the trunk so I need to mask it. Using the select tool I trace out the trunk then create a new mask from this selection hiding it. This punches a hole in my darker layer down to the original over-exposed layer underneath.
Next I'm going to re-set the focus on the tree-trunk by blurring everything else. I've already got a layer that keeps the trunk untouched so just to keep things simple I'll blur that layer; a quick Gaussian Blur does the trick.
Finally I'll remove that colour cast. For this I'll use an Colour Balance adjustment layer I'll drop the blue towards yellow a little -10. Hmm the trunk needs some more red up that to +10; need to drop the blue some more -20.
et voilà
[Looking at it in full again I should blur the left-hand part of the tree-trunk, but I only knocked this out quickly]
As mentioned in a comment just for fun I altered the background using my photo from here
6 comments:
OK, now that's just crazy. I have no idea what you were saying in your post, but the result is rather perplexing. You seem to have processed different objects in the image in different ways — despite the minor detail that this is impossible.
As for the final result… well, you took a rubbish photo and made it look slightly less bad. Obviously the entire shot is still horribly bleached out. But that colour is gone now, and there's not much we can do about that after the fact.
Interesting how blurring the bushes makes them look more… leafy. (This is actually spring, so there's not that much greenery yet.)
'What you have just done is impossible' and yet...
This is the beauty of masks and layers. Take a copy of the whole image, mess around with it then punch holes in it as you would a mask (eyeholes mouth etc.) so you can see the original image underneath
For this image I kinda liked the bleached look, in fact if I get enough time I might rip out the tree line and add in a desert instead and alter the colours again; up the red, down the blue.
Blurring's fun give it a go, just take a copy of your image first :-)
But surely cutting round the edges of an object with pixel accuracy would take many, many months?
Indeed that's where my handy-dandy time machine comes into play. :-P
PSP, PE, and GIMP all come with smart selection tools, just run it around what you want and it'll snap around objects; it's not perfect but then you can use the manual tools to tweak out the worst bits.
I'm actually quite impressed by Element's magic selection tool, shame the programme doesn't do other things I want; I may look into upgrading to 7 though amusingly the upgrade price is only £2 cheaper than the full programme. I would like Photoshop itself but at ~£500 that's a little steep. I'll also have to look at the latest PSP.
Just as an aside I did end up altering the backdrop and re-blurring the left hand side, photo in the entry at the bottom.
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