PP Challenge #9 - Winner announced

[Donald]

After a record entry and a record number of votes cast in the PP Challenge, a very clear winner has emerged. Streaking well ahead of the rest of the field we have .................

Peter

with

A mighty impressive display of post-processing skills indeed.

But well done and thank you to everyone else who entered. It was great fun to moderate.

Peter will now be invited to:
a) tell us exactly what he did and how he did it
b) give us an image to use for the next challenge, which will be along shortly

[ericg]

Best to Peter he did an outstanding job.

[Nat]

Congratulations, Peter!! and GOOD JOB! Yes, it made us all smile and appreciate what could be done with patience and experience!

[conkerwood]

Many thanks to all who entered and voted.

These are the P.P. Steps I followed.

1) Copy and paste the boats one at a time. Displace each one slightly ensuring that the boat is repositioned to cover up most of the boat's initial position. 1 or 2 percent size increase for each boat can help covering areas with the increase being undetectable to the eye. Each copy feathered by around 5 to 10 pixels. Layer mask after each paste to help remove stray pixels and ensure a smooth merge of repositioned boats with their new background. Working at about 400% zoom for this sort of stuff.
2) Needed to retain the darker patches in the water near the back narrow part of the canal to retain some idea of reflection but didn't want detailed coloured reflections. So cloned out reflections and also cloned out all reeds and residual boat hull to leave a relatively smooth surface to superimpose the sea. It looked like this.



3) I too the whale pic last year. (Whale watching is my passion and I spend day after day out there with my lovely wife, trying for the perfect pic) This is the original whale pic I used.



4) Obviously DOF is an issue with the whale pic as the back waves are OOF and would look wrong in the canal pic where everything is pretty much in focus. So copied and pasted narrow strips of in focus sea from just above the hump in the tail, reduced the size of progressive strips to give the impression of waves getting smaller in the distance. Sea is easy to clone, feather to about 5 pixels and if there is an area that doesn't join smoothly then a second strip on top feathered to about 30 pixels removes all join traces.
5) Pasted the modified whale pic onto the canal pic. Layer mask to allow the darker patches through at the back of the canal and to carefully merge the sea with the boat hulls.
6) Not enough sea at the right of the whale to cover the canal up to the hull of the large boat so I cloned more sea using the area below and to the left of the whale as a source. Again relatively easy if you are careful. Always cut fairly large sections but zigzag to break up recognisable sections. Feather to about 5 pixels but up to 30 if needed for a smooth merge. Again layer mask between each clone (even the small fiddly ones) to ensure effective blending. Flatten.... nearly there.
7) Duplicate merged image and then de noise, unsharp mask and lift colour and brightness on the top copy. Layer mask so that the corrections not applied to the whale and the sea as they were not needed. Flatten. Final tweek of contrast and brightness and thats it.
Hope this all makes some kind of sense. Happy to answer if anyone has any questions or if I have explained poorly. Again my thanks for your votes and hopefully the next PP comp will attract as much support brilliant way to develop PP skills.

Peter

[Bobobird]

Beautiful job there. Congrats.

[PhotoByTrace]

Amazing job... and nicely detailed process too!

[Donald]

These are the P.P. Steps I followed.

Remarkable and amazing. A fascinating read.

[rappensuncle]

I remember when I first saw this one I thought, "wow that's epic!". Congrats, Peter, well deserved win!

[Ati]

Hi Peter, congratulations, a superb winner. I particularly like the waves to the right of the whale's tail, under the red rusty hull. Definitely shades of Hokusai ! Thanks also for the explanations, very helpful for a PS 101 man like me.

[Pinecone]

Congratulations Peter, and thank you for the insight on how you managed the effect, brilliant stuff.
As a new member I look forward to your Challenge #10, and no doubt expect something that will stretch the limits of ones imagination beyond bounds, something to tackle during the cold winter nights here in the UK.
One factor that comes to mind, is that one should not rush these challenges, but learn from your example of giving plenty of thought to the task, take your time, sleep on it, and then final improvements are much easier.
Well done Peter, and everyone else who entered and made this a great challenge, I enjoyed my first entry and feel sure I am not alone.
Regards
Peter (Pinecone)

[ScoutR]

Terrific job Peter, and thanks for the explanation. I knew there was more too it than just plopping 2 pictures together. Such attention was paid to the wake and the shifting of the boats, but I had absolutely no idea how it was done. Very interesting and Very well done

Wendy

[teokf]

Peter, it's just amazing what you did.

Just a request, would it be possible to put this explanation into a tutorial with some images from PS for someone like me who's a newbie with PS?

[MrB]

Peter, you set yourself a real challenge and all your hard work was certainly worth it - an incredible resulting image. First position well-earned and deserved - Well Done!

Philip

[ga6742]

Congratulations Peter. Creative and entertaining.........George

[Skyline]

Brilliant Peter. And a great read too. Thank you.

[conkerwood]

Many thanks for all the positive comments. I really appreciate them. Can't wait for the next PP comp. I learned so much from this one.

My best to all

Peter

[Kalimah]

So COOL! Great job Peter!

[Wendy Stanford]

Congratulations Peter, wonderful effort, thanks for the detailed explaination, you thought through everything,

[hobbymandoc]

For sure a great entry. Congratulations !!

[DavidRReed]

Peter, hi,

A woirthy winner and thanks for the details on how you did it.

Congratualtions,

David R.