A "before & after" thread?

mrmac

I'd like to see what people have done to their shots to reach the "finished" image.

Here's a recent example of mine, to show what I mean:

Before:



After:



Detail: just cropped & added a frame, nothing else done.


I'm hoping for some adjustment ideas, as I'm SOOOO green at PP

(Oh, I think it should be fair to make suggestions if you feel it would help?)

Slidinginfinity

This



& This



=



With a blending gradient filter & some cropping.

.Longshanks.

From this to this

Cabaal

Longshanks100, thats some difference

How did you take the shot itself?

melekalikimaka

the subject, with a pane of glass over it, amd focus on the drops of water

.Longshanks.

melekalikimaka wrote: »

the subject, with a pane of glass over it, amd focus on the drops of water

Bingo!

challengemaster

Wasn't my photo to begin with, but probably one of my better edits to date

before



after

oshead

I don't usually alter an image this much, but just couldn't help it on this occasion.. :pac:

mrmac

oshead wrote: »

I don't usually alter an image this much, but just couldn't help it on this occasion.. :pac:

WOW - that's some difference!
Really makes the shot though, it's great.

Fenster

Some of my own:

Kintarō Hattori

One of my favourites:

hi_im_fil

This


to this....


More for fun than anything else

Morrisseeee

Oh, I've loads of these !!

Anouilh

Original, Straight Out of Camera




Cropped and subjected to Harry's Filter in Irfanview

Ballyman

The first one has a contrast/vibrance increase and a little bit of luminance adjustment. I also cloned out stones and rocks on the beach and that was it.

The second one has had it's background removed and another put in place. The horse is Brave Inca and I wanted a shot of him on his own without any other horses in the frame. He's old now and I knew he wasn't going to win so as soon as he passed this hurdle I took another shot of the hurdle on it's own so I could change it afterwards. He will probably never again be seen on a racecourse after this shot was taken.
I won my largest amount of money ever on him the year he won the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham!

njburke

I'm beginning to see the benefits of PP from the above examples, Oshead how much time went into that shot of you daughter and the puddle?

Heres one I'm pleased with, its a colour film scan from foleys chemist on meath street, cheap but the resolution and range is poor.
(I can get exactly the same fuji service in naas, but foleys is 1/5th the price plus they posted it back to me, thanks again to Humberklog for the tip).

I plan to put the neg into a better scanner.
There wasn't much light and what light there was nowhere near daylight balance, so greyscale conversion followed by a crop, her indoors wants it on a canvas.

Before>



And after.

cnocbui

mrmac

cnocbui - that's mad!

It's giving me motion sickness, and hurting my eyes!

I like it

squareballoon

A bit heavy handed on the sharpening though

Tallon

This is one of my Fav sites, it shows you the pic before and after

MrMac, maybe you could stick it in the OP



http://www.batailley.net/index.php

KarmaGarda

I use gimp to post process, just because it's free. But I'm finding for my purposes it pretty much has everything I need.

Image below is just cropped, applied 3 different blends of the same photo on top of itself to bring out the colours (think it's called a fake HDR), and added a border.

Original:



"Gimped"

Borderfox

Before


After

mrmac

Borderfox - could you share what you did with your shot?
Lovely result btw.

Borderfox

5 shots 1ev apart and converted to HDR in photomatix, topaz dramatic preset and Nik Software Silvr EFx pro conversion to black and white. Curves medium contrast to finish off.

ronanphilip

after


before

mrmac

Borderfox wrote: »

5 shots 1ev apart and converted to HDR in photomatix, topaz dramatic preset and Nik Software Silvr EFx pro conversion to black and white. Curves medium contrast to finish off.

Thanks - appreciate the inside info - very dramatic result.

oshead

njburke wrote: »

I'm beginning to see the benefits of PP from the above examples, Oshead how much time went into that shot of you daughter and the puddle?

Don't know really. I was just practing with my new wacom tablet and eventually went overboard in the end. I guess "Time" didn't come into it. Probably took ages though.

Dave OS

GhostInTheRuins

My most recent 'fix'. I probably should have put a tiny bit of effort into getting the exposure and angle right to begin with :pac:

simonp1

Here is my best and all thanks to the folks on here

Before


After

mrmac

Very interesting posts here, with fantastic end results. It shows how well images can be "saved".

If I could ask folks to give a brief summary of what they did to their images - I'd really appreciate the pointers.

AnCatDubh

Shot indoors with a 50mm at f1.7, handheld and at ISO 3200 which meant the noise was high to begin with. Lighting was obviously brutal (Infact why I took it I don't know - how and ever). Manual adjustment of the white balance (big adjustment to the left). Went for some noise reduction whilst pushing the exposure bias by +3 - this softened somewhat from what was harsh noise but left it with ample grit to be reasonably aesthetic. Went for the monochrome conversion that Silkypix (pp software) gives me and finally a little unsharp which given the overall poor sharpness actually increased the 'gritty' nature of it.

That's the gist of it.

Trojan911

A couple more.

Original:



Finished:



Original:



Finished:

honerbright

Some gorgeous photos in this thread!!

One of the boats that was down at the docks during the Volvo race;

Before:


After:


Just cloned the sky to get rid of the buildings and fiddled with the levels and contrast.

KarmaGarda

Just to reply to Mrmac:

If you use gimp what I did to bring out the colours, i.e. what I call a fake HDR, is just:

• Auto white balanced the image. Sometimes auto white balance doesn't work so you'll have to manually correct the levels youself to get the image at the correct "brightness".
• Make 2 layers that are a copy of the original.
• On first layer I
  • desaturated
  • inverted
  • added a glow
  • Set layer blend to "soft light"
  • opacity to 50%
• On second layer I
  • increased the input dark levels to 100 (basically concentrates the darks/shadows)
  • Then set layer opacity to 30/40%
• Flattened the image
• Did some final levels adjustments.

It's quite handy if you can't do a real HDR on it.

Buzz Lightyear

This was one taken for the Kilmainham Gaol project for the Dublin Camera Club. Its the 1916 wing of the jail.

I've obviously croped the image, however five images were taken with the difference in between each shot of about 1ev. The images were then tone maped in Photomatix, before being brought back into light room and converted to monochrome. Some dodging and burning was done to clean up the image.

dinneenp

This photoblog is a very good example of before and after. Hover over the bar above the image to see the before shot. It's Alan Rossiter Photography (not mine)

Silently loud

After:



Not the best but thought i'd put it up. Selt thought and just getting in to the whole photography thing would like to get some feed back.

honerbright

Never really edited my photos after taking them before (other that a quick sharpen or contrast adjustment) but this thread and the sites linking off them are fantastic and really inspiring, so i've been messing around a lot more in photoshop :P

Anyhow, this is an old shot back from when I lived in New Zealand.
Photo was cropped, cloned out the birds and ducks and played with the levels and colours a bit.

Before:


After:

daycent

Before


After


I thought this shot was ruined because of the lens flare but I like how it turned out. I converted to B&W in Lightroom and did some more dodging/burning in PS and some other adjustments.

dinneenp

Not so much a before and after, rather combining two together to make a poster:

kjt

Brilliant thread guys. I love seeing what people can do to images and how they achieve their end result! Great shot above Phil, really like it!!


HDR of 4 different exposures
+ Increased contrast in photoshop



I've done a whole tutorial for this image.



-Sharpening of the eyes
-Curves to brighten the image
-Cross process
-Another brighten curves layer, selecting only the eyes


6 different exposures taken
3 different hdr images where then made from those 6
In Photoshop:
Adjustment layer: Increased contrast 70% opacity + layermask for sky
Adjustment layer: Brighten 49% opacity + layermask for road
->Adjustment layer for the above layer: Lighten @ 40% opacity
Adjustment layer: Linear Contrast 20% opacity + layermask for sun
Adjustment layer: Darken 40% opacity + layermask for the sides
Adjustment layer: Lighen 50% opacity + layermask selective areas

TheNorthBank

Straight From Camera:



After Photoshop:



Added a new sky, turned the light in the Lighthouse on, flipped the image so Lighthouse is now on the right as you look at it, cloned out some pipes that were running downthe side of the lighthouse and some various contrast adjustments. Thats all I think!

.Longshanks.

From the motors assignment thread;



I used a Canon 1000D with the kit lens set at 18mm (as wide as it will go) and in Aperture mode at f9.0. Took three pics using a different exposure in each; -1, 0 & +1. This is the second exposure (i.e. at 0)


I then created a HDR jpeg using photomatrix software. Just played around with sliders until i was happy with it. As the car wasn't clean i was hoping for a dark / moody kinda look.

After that i copied the outline of the car into a new layer and blurred the background (done ground and sky separately) to try and give effect car was moving. After that I then played around with the wheels using radial blur to make them look like they were moving also.

Then I gave the windows a light darkening tint (to hide fact that nobody was driving ) but didn't wanna go dark as looked sh1te. Lastly done a high pass filter to sharpen the pic. Imaged flattened, cropped, framed and posted on flickr!

.Longshanks.

One more from me, but this time no write up (yet anyways) as its almost bedtime

Before


After

TheNorthBank

Brilliant processing Longshanks, very impressive. The first one particularly, making a still object look like its tearing up the road. 10 out of 10 dude!!!

honerbright

Finally decided to explore the scary world of HDR
Only had two RAW files of my computer and one of which is mad noisy so I only had this one to mess with, but I think it turned out OK.

Before:





After:

GhostInTheRuins

Longshanks100 wrote: »

From the motors assignment thread;

I used a Canon 1000D with the kit lens set at 18mm (as wide as it will go) and in Aperture mode at f9.0. Took three pics using a different exposure in each; -1, 0 & +1. This is the second exposure (i.e. at 0)

I then created a HDR jpeg using photomatrix software. Just played around with sliders until i was happy with it. As the car wasn't clean i was hoping for a dark / moody kinda look.

After that i copied the outline of the car into a new layer and blurred the background (done ground and sky separately) to try and give effect car was moving. After that I then played around with the wheels using radial blur to make them look like they were moving also.

Then I gave the windows a light darkening tint (to hide fact that nobody was driving ) but didn't wanna go dark as looked sh1te. Lastly done a high pass filter to sharpen the pic. Imaged flattened, cropped, framed and posted on flickr!

Yep nice job, but were the three exposures really necessary there? To me it looks like the '0' exposure has enough range to get the same effect.

.Longshanks.

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Yep nice job, but were the three exposures really necessary there? To me it looks like the '0' exposure has enough range to get the same effect.

Perhaps, but that picture was shot on jpeg and was before I discovered the joys of raw. I also didn't want to over cook the tone mapping....
Works for me!

Anouilh

Guided by some comments from members here on this photo

[IMG][/img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3555/3370557679_c7cf4ef3e0.jpg

I tried a colour change


[IMG][/img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2439/3676096000_8c90f7aa72.jpg


It would be interesting to know if the posters find it an improvement.

TheNorthBank

I love the red one, it looks like your standing right in the middle of an erupting volcano!

.Longshanks.

Before


After


From the random photo thread;

Ricky91t wrote: »

Was this a stationary shot,The photoshopped?

Sorry for asking i'd just like to know,Either way it's great,If it is what i say,It's some excellent work!

keps wrote: »

That car pic is a truly incredible shot- you can sense the speed as if you were in the car (especially in the larger shot).
Top class indeed and well done on a really great image! ( I've sent a PM to you to ask a question)

Twice I have tried to quote Longshanks post - but it did not work for me.

Thanks people! I love to say i have access to a rig, but its all photoshop using the radial blur tool