PIMP my raw (a processing challenge) - WINNER ANNOUCED

Luke

Legend
Location
Milwaukee, WI USA
Name
Luke
Some of you enjoy shooting and loathe the processing. This challenge is for the rest of you. I love digging into the software and tearing it up. Sliders to 11.......whoah.....that's a bit too much. There we go....much better.

Anyways, I have a raw file for you to play with (and sorry it's in PEF format because I haven't set my camera to DNG.....my bad.....but most of you file meddlers should find a way to open it....if not, let me know and I can send you a TIFF of it or something). The composition is nothing special and it looks quite dark, but that's partly intent. Feel free to do anything at all to it. Crops for re-composition are recommended. I'm also fine with complete manipulation if that's something you enjoy. I think there's potential for a mono treatment or go with nature's colors (or some wild variant). There's plenty of work to be done pulling stuff out of the shadows (or just blocking them if you prefer).

We'll give everyone until the end of the weekend to play with it and upload their finished version here. I'll announce my fave on Monday and the winner can then re-start with a RAW of their own.

Now PIMP this....... http://dropcanvas.com/r5nlw (you should just be able to click this link and download the file IMGP4756.PEF) And the link and file disappear in 3 days so don't delay.

If you can't open the PEF file, I have added a TIFF and a JPG here....... http://dropcanvas.com/bev4p

ALSO, so this might be a little educational (rather than just a bunch of people playing with sliders), please let us know what you did, any software and if possible WHY you did what you did. Insight behind how the mind works is more helpful than just looking at the finished product.
 
Opened it succesfully in Faststone Image Viewer, then exported as TIFF and edited in GIMP (dunno if GIMP could've opened it by itself, but faststone is really quick and opens pretty much any file you throw at it).

Fairly gentle edit for a gentle image. Cropped it down to the essentials (IMO; also, I just like the aspect ratio to be strongly horizontal, a bit cinematic) and applied a curves preset that's supposed to mimic Kodak Portra film, but is probably a bit too blue. In this instance, I like how it enhanced the night colours while at the same time bringing out the yellow in the flowers. That (cropping and preset) is all I did...

IMGP4756-g.jpg


(Edit) for some reason I'm not seeing the right hand side 20% or so of the image; the second flower should be visible in its entirety. Dunno if others see the image properly? If not, you can view the full image in my PL gallery.
 
I bought ColorEfex just for the Godknowswhat filter !

Yeah, well since it doesn't keep any sort of record of what you did once you hit the "save" button, I find that the godknowswhat is the filter I use most often by FAR.

If you ask me to go back and recreate something, I can occasionally get close, but can pretty much never replicate it, and often can't even get that close... So, whether godknows or Godknows, I know for damn sure that I don't know... ;)

-Ray
 
Dean, I had never even considered making that other one pop. I'll give you extra credit for that. That doesn't mean that cropping it or leaving it as a secondary feature is worth less. All 3 have their selling points. All 3 are pretty straight up, too. But I suppose you give people a bad flower photo, there's only so much that can be done. Keep 'em coming everyone.
 
Dean, I had never even considered making that other one pop. I'll give you extra credit for that. That doesn't mean that cropping it or leaving it as a secondary feature is worth less. All 3 have their selling points. All 3 are pretty straight up, too. But I suppose you give people a bad flower photo, there's only so much that can be done. Keep 'em coming everyone.

Well, I wanted to follow that tried and tested rule of leaving as much dead space smack dab in the middle of the image as possible. I even cropped to accentuate that. :)
 
Well, I wanted to follow that tried and tested rule of leaving as much dead space smack dab in the middle of the image as possible. I even cropped to accentuate that. :)

I'm already learning new things from this. I had never heard that advice before. Lately I've been leaving massive dead space in a corner/half. I never think of centering anything unless I want to go over the top with it.
 
Woke up blurry eyed far to early this morning , saw this challenge . So this was done squinting at my overly bright phone screen in snapseed.
I am now going back to sleep.
544b3049282b157beb31544415bbf695.jpg
 
I tried a "clean" b&w sepia toned edit. I thought the composition worked as is. Left to right and then pulled in to the back.

9VzmGF1.png


I should talk a bit about the edit. LR+SilverEfex. Changed the colour temperature in LR, increased vibrance quite a bit before taking it to SilverEfex (that helps a lot in creating tonal contrast). Finally removed noise using Dfine2, and locally sharpened the main flower. That's it.
 
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