Fakin' it

I'll be the first to say it - you sure made silk from a sow's ear :) That is excellent, I've dabbled with retouching along the lines of Ray's but with much less skill.

May I ask how long this took and what software you used?
 
Nice jobs, the both of you. Funny how we like to remove traces of modernity: in 100 years people will be as happy to see our present cars & such in a picture as we would a 1930s Bugatti or a stagecoach.

I've done a lot of retouching to remove ugly bits, or even to make people smile when they really looked grim, but what I really enjoy is bending a pic to make it surreal or to fake something that isn't really happening. I wasn't really taking pics over the steering wheel at 158 kph - I was doing a staid 85 and Photoshop did the rest. The comeuppance is that I hit Ctrl+S at the wrong moment and buggered up the PSD I did all the work in.

Anyway, I'd really like to see some other examples of flagrant deception, and hear how people managed them.

Cheers!
 
I'll be the first to say it - you sure made silk from a sow's ear :) That is excellent, I've dabbled with retouching along the lines of Ray's but with much less skill.

May I ask how long this took and what software you used?

less than 2 minutes - content aware in PS5
 
You guys are making me want to be able to do this....and to do this I'd have to purchase some new software, so for now I'm going to be content just looking.

It's very cool to see the befores and afters!

JohnE, thanks for starting this thread off and for your introductory photo which I liked very much the first moment I saw it.:cool::D
 
Mine were all maybe 2-3 minutes apiece in Aperture using the touch up tool. It allows you to clone from elsewhere in the photo or it will do the interpretation for you based on the surrounding area. Each works better in different circumstances. The first one probably took me 10-15 minutes and a lot of "undo" and try-agains because I was just learning how to use the tools (and it was a lot more complex set of changes. But once you get the hang of them, its quite easy.

But this is a fundamentally different kind of thing than what John was doing in the first one and what he did so brilliantly in the "bicycle" thread with the wall coming unstuck in that Italian village to reveal another little alleyway that the cyclist turned down. THAT was an awesome example of stepping well outside the bounds of "photography" into some really creative art, using photographs as the starting point. You might want to put that one up again here.

BTW, here's another example of a before and after. This one was impossible to really do even close to accurately because of the size of the van that I removed. So I added some huge architectural elements to the south entrance to City Hall that are NOT actually part of the building. After I did it, I swore I'd never use it but then later stumbled onto it again and couldn't tell where the "fix" was so I figured, OK, its not accurate, but it gets rid of a really ugly van in the foreground. So I've used it a few times since.

-Ray

View attachment 31329

View attachment 31330

-Ray
 
You guys are making me want to be able to do this....and to do this I'd have to purchase some new software, so for now I'm going to be content just looking.

...

The main thing is to have layers. I used Paintshop Pro (PSP) for ten years, and only moved over to PS recently, other than using Adobe Camera Raw a great deal. PSP is a deal cheaper and has excellent layer handling - the two pics I posted on the other thread were done with it. I haven't had a recent version, though - when Corel took over I tried their version and gave up in disgust when it tore away off round all my disks looking for pics. In the end, PS is better. Dunno if Elements handles layers...

I revisited my speeding session pic from above, adding a dark blue overlay layer and monkeying about with the perspective of the dials: Here's the result:



The lights were simulated simply by erasing a portion of the overlay.

This, on the other hand, is as shot:

JohnAtWork.jpg


:)
 
One you may have seen before:

Untitled3v2.jpg
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With an added moon for some extra kitsch..

Cielo_negro_y_luna.jpg
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And the original, which is actually a scan from a Kodak Gold 200 negative shot with a 1953 Kodak Signet 35:

img252v3.jpg
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Cheers,

Antonio
 
I can't believe that I had completely missed this thread - from way back when it originated!:redface:

So I am still without layers. You three all did some awfully handy things - Fuddlestack's self-portrait included.;)

Sue, yours looks good from this angle!

Antonio, am I correct that you're using Photoshop for your kitschy moon (which I think looks great) and the other iterations?
 
Antonio, am I correct that you're using Photoshop for your kitschy moon (which I think looks great) and the other iterations?

Yes, PS CS5. The funky colors are the result of a curves manipulation. The sky was imported from a black and white version of the same photo, using layers, although I could have just painted it black and it would have been just as well. The moon is a separate photograph of the moon, combined using layers.

Cheers,

Antonio
 
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