landscape touch ups

[Mick O'Tighe]

Hello,

I've been working on touching up a shot I took in Panama, but to be honest I really have no idea what I'm doing and am basically fumbling in the dark trying to find what looks good. Here are the before and after shots of what I have come up with thus far. I'm especially not sure what to do with the person in the shot, if anything... he just seems to blend in to me... Any feedback suggestions would be extremely appreciated!

[Iguanasan]

This is my take on it. I think if you ask 10 different people you are going to get 10 different answers ;)

Unless you really want that person in the photo then I would crop them out. Try to look for the "photo within the photo".

I cropped, straightened the tower and cloned out the antenna and boosted the shadows (all with Picasa). My result is here (I hope you don't mind, it's easier than explaining sometimes)
4246

[Mad Aussie]

Have you put the before and after shots? Or did you accidently put up two before shots? I can't see a difference.

[Mick O'Tighe]

ah! good catch lol. I had originally uploaded a large-ish file, spotted the file size limit post, and when I re-uploaded I must of put up two of the after shot... fixed now, original and processed are there.

Iguanasan, good idea... I'll mess around with cropping it.

[Mad Aussie]

Looks like you fixed before and after thing now ... it was abit dull looking to begin with I see.

In the meantime I decided to have a crack at what was there so I used the after version to create what's below. Hope you don't mind.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u104/Mad-Aussie/09%20photographyca/july-dec09/mick-otighe.jpg

[Mick O'Tighe]

interesting... I took some inspiration from that and tried to make the grassy area and person have more of a 'glow' and seem a bit unreal, and I like the change. I also tried cropping... I like it, but not as much as the full shot, something about the wideness of the sky around the tower I like. Oh, and I don't mind any attempts at editing it you make, in fact I insist and appreciate the effort to help!

Current version before I hit the sack:

[JAS_Photo]

I really like Mad Aussie's idea and your interpretation but depending on your taste, you can go the opposite route and make everything supersharp and contrasty which gives the look of an illustration or photo realist painting.

[Mad Aussie]

Gotta work tonight so I'm out of time myself now but tomorrow I might have another crack with a different crop and technique and see what I can do.

Not bad Raiven ... not bad.

[Marko]

Very interesting.....at first glance I wasn't sure the shot was a keeper, but I like the various treatments the members suggested.
Personally, I think I'm with iggy on this one but I'd likely crop the left side to the tower as opposed to iggy's right crop. The main problem here for me is the tower structure, it's too central imo. The various treatments though, help the shot quite a bit. Hope that helps - Marko

[tomorrowstreasures]

Hmm. If Mick's main objective was to lose the lady with the camera - i don't think most of the edits make the cut.
Mick - you could go and do some cloning, but that would take some serious time to do it right. Cropping is a great idea. The crop for it though, IMO should be a slice out of the middle as a keeper turning the horizontal image into a vertical one...
I would also use the texture of the bricks as your main focus, not the color of the bricks. just my :twocents: worth.

[Mick O'Tighe]

thanks for the feedback! Something about this I liked when I looked at it, but once I started messing with it I was having a really hard time making into anything I liked... hence my posting it here. I didn't necessarily want to get rid of the camera person (who is actually a dude ;) ), just do SOMETHING over there. Here is my final stab at it before I abandon it... I used the coloring from my last attempt, rotated it slightly to straighten the tower, and then I did some content-aware scaling to put the tower off center, rather than crop... mostly just to mess around with that tool ;) An interesting learning project at the lest. Here it is.

[tomorrowstreasures]

I didn't necessarily want to get rid of the camera person (who is actually a dude ;) ), just do SOMETHING over there.

:wall-an:My brain does that all of the time... reading one thing that has a different meaning... that is why it is so scary for me to post things. :o sigh... anywho

I cracked up with the dude vs lady thing.

As long as you are happy with what you are producing that is all that really matters!

[Mad Aussie]

Here's my last shot at it ...

cropped and cloned a bit to remove the human and then because it left the tower a bit too centered for my liking in this shot I made a feature of the sky ...

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u104/Mad-Aussie/09%20photographyca/july-dec09/mick-otighe2.jpg

[kat]

Like that touch with the cloud MA..really brings the stone building out!

I just got a new program and fooling around with option I wouldn't really use..like lets say (night vision) ha ha..but thought this would be a cool image to try it out!

I'd say if you like the person in it..do so but my preference would be no. I did a crop but its a square one.

Can't wait to see the final product!

[jjeling]

MA, stole my idea. I cloned out the person as well but went with a different technique. Just another version I guess.

[Mad Aussie]

Went kinda misty and old looking there JJ. I did a B&W version also but didn't bother to keep and post it up.

[Mick O'Tighe]

all very cool... I unfortunately went to try something completely different and saved over my previous file, so I think I'm abandoning this one for now! Note to self: set up version control for photo work. Thanks for all the feedback though guys, twas a good learning experience!

[Mad Aussie]

Learnings what it's all about :)

[jlabel]

THe first think you must look when touching up a picture is focus, you must chose WHERE to apply the sharp and not just sharpen all the picture, the other thing actually I think you make it first, check out for chromatic, barrel and aspheric aberrations correct that first with lens correction or other tool since it will affect the picture overrall. Specially important if you are using a kit lens.
THis picture of yours seems a bit over interpolated I dont know if its a camera issue or you did it on purpose, but study the best sharpen radius for your camera