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Comments and guidance please

Started by rockthumper, September 14, 2007, 06:11:32 AM

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rockthumper

I picked this one because it looked dead easy:


Now It looks like this:


But the more I look at it the more I see strange but subtle colour casts and areas (particularly in the sand in front of the figures) look sort of 'grimy'. I've already run an edge preserving smooth which took care of some of that but it's still there in places. There's also the sand on the right - I just can't get rid of the blown out look, if I multiply it more it just turns blue!  I've never tried to fix this kind of photo problem before and I've no idea how to approach it. So does it need to be fixed? If so how and is there anything else I've missed?
Cheers,
RT.

Hannie

Hi RT,

Nice job you did on the ocean and sky!
To the blown out part of the beach you can apply some burn first, not too much .  Then you can select the middle part of the beach and past it in its own layer.  stretch it out a bit so it fits over the blown out part and then set opacity to your liking.
I also see some weird patterns in the sand (and also partly) in the sea, like you said.  In the blue channel it almost looks like numbers and letters are present.  The only thing I can think of right now is to use the healing and clone stamp and really zoom in while you are at it.

Hannie

Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

glennab

Hi RT

I'd give the photo more depth of color and use a relatively large hard brush to clone any areas of the sand that are off-color or have strange shapes.  The beauty of sand and water is that they're fairly easy to clone to look natural as long as you don't show any obvious repeats of irregularities.  (I have to do this often  -- in fact I had sand very similar to what's in this photo in a cover shot yesterday, and we have to be sure that if we use a stock photo or combine photos that our sand, sea and sky look like Florida).  I don't know if you ever use (or even have) selective color, but sometimes that works well to pull a little of one color from a specific area (i.e., your water needs some magenta removed, I think).  You can make a loose selection of the water, feather it, and remove magenta and red from the cyan and blue.  I find that many times that's more natural looking than making a global color change.

Worth a shot!

Glenna
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

(Photoshop CS5 /Mac Pro)

rockthumper

Thanks Hannie and Glenna - I'll try what you've suggested and post back later.

rockthumper

Current version:


I had a look at CMYK layers and some of them were quite "gritty" looking so I softened them masking the figures,. burnt in the sand area in Y and K where it was most blown out, recombined and reduced magenta overall and then selectively on that purple stripe across the sea. (Thanks for that hint Glenna).
Now what I want to do is remove the strange green/yellow shapes (maybe the photo was on top of some writing and it bled through?) but I'm not sure how.
Comments?

Hannie

The sea improved a lot, well done RT! 
I had a long look at those green/yellow shapes and used all the tricks I know but it looks like it is going to take a lot of healing and cloning.  Like Glenna said it is not hard to do that with sand or water.
The photo already looks so much better than what you started with, the owner is going to be so pleased!  :up2:

Hannie
Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

klassylady25

It's the characters in the hats!!  lol  that count, but it really is coming along very well.  It's a bit light, but I'm on my daughter's computer so don't take my word for it.

Candy

Tess (Tassie D)

It is really looking great RT. I tried using the saturation brush/up at about 35% on the patches of the sea and it brought up the yellowish bits slightly better, made them less noticeable. Didn't work on the sand so well though.
Tess Cameron
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

rockthumper

Quote from: Tassie D on September 15, 2007, 08:47:46 PM
It is really looking great RT. I tried using the saturation brush/up at about 35% on the patches of the sea and it brought up the yellowish bits slightly better, made them less noticeable. Didn't work on the sand so well though.

Saturation brush - well, there's a tool I've never used before! Thanks for the tip. :)

rockthumper

Well this is the final version, I've fiddled with it till I'm cross-eyed and it hasn't got much better but I'm sending it back as done and wait to see if QC send me a stern email.  :mad:



kiska

Rock, I used PS levels for a little more contrast. Then took out some red and magenta in the skin in color balance.

http://upload.pbase.com/image/85662300



kiska
Photoshop 2021, MacPro


Hannie

Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

rockthumper

Dammit you two! Now I'm going to have to do another edit 'cause your pics look much better than mine. :-[
It's midnight so I'll do it another time....   

klassylady25

Quote from: rockthumper on September 16, 2007, 10:54:17 AM
Dammit you two! Now I'm going to have to do another edit 'cause your pics look much better than mine. :-[
It's midnight so I'll do it another time....   

When you wake up think about taking the color from the area of the water that you like (I took the bluer shade) and made a color layer, at about 25% to start and colored over the yellowish parts of the water.  Did the same with the sand.  I didn't pay close attention to not coloring the guys, because if you look real close you can see a bit on their legs, but you get the idea.

It helped with the yellow.  Lastly because it was still light, I duplicated the layer in 'multiply' and set it at 50%. I liked it and made a final layer (ctrl,shift,alt) and that's about it. 

You're doing great.