Project 52 (sort of, maybe Mark VK)

[Mark von Kanel]

Ok For week 2 im going to try to come up with a way of making this picture (which i like SOOC) into something different. im not quite sure on what to do with it yet so and suggestions are more than welcome. It was shot during a festival in Bucharest, Romania, mid October.

[IzzieK]

I can only think of selective masking and blurring the background as your subject here is where there are too much to look at. Beautiful Harley...used to have a smaller girlie one, a Sporter. Beautiful bike...too much fun. Is this one yours???

[Mark von Kanel]

Beautiful Harley...used to have a smaller girlie one, a Sporter. Beautiful bike...too much fun. Is this one yours???

Izzie, you sound like my kinda gal!! No Not mine and unfortunately at the moment i dont have a bike as im not home often enough to take advantage of it the last one i had was a suzuki velousia which looked quite similar but with the British weather i spent more time cleaning it than riding it....

Heres my first edit in LR only ive applied a blue hue slider some clarity, a tighter crop, vignette some clarity and increased the exposure, what do you think? Izzy might be right about the background but thats a photoshop job so one for tomorrow.

[Kaye Leggett]

I kind of agree with Izzie - the picture is quite dark and with the bike being black it doesn't stand out enough. Somehow those chrome bits need to stand out too. I think it would stand some cropping as the background doesn't really add anything to the bike. Or you could go completely off piste and give it a cartoon look ? or is that sacriledge for a bike like this (apologies, I know nothing about bike pedigree)

[Mark von Kanel]

Thanks Kay/Izzie.

Kaye any suggestions are valid and the whole thing is designed to get me to push my photoshop/processing skills so ill have a go for you!

[Geoff F]

Not really sure about this, Mark, but my first thoughts were about boosting the chrome brightness, carefully avoiding any over exposure, and leaving the rest as a dark rather moody slightly low key effect.

And as a second viewing, I'm still thinking along those lines. Just as an experiment, I will download the image and have a quick play around with it.

[Geoff F]

Here is an example of my quick edit, but to save adding anything to your Project 52 thread; because this would only increase size and confusion, I have uploaded it to an album and linked from there.

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/fo...&d=1420746125]

My quick play involved a slight change in the colour balance from blue towards yellow plus an Adjustment Layer with the blend mode at Overlay. And a little bit of edit to the mask in order to keep the wheels slightly brighter.

Not saying this is any better, but just a thought about something different.

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi Geoff,

Im really struggling with it! your Edit is good and i like it but i think Kaye and Izzie may be right about the background, although i like the moody grunge sort of look, whatever i try to do with it in photoshop the background just gets more and more distracting.... must admit im tired though... maybe something will come to me in the morning!

[wilgk]

It is indeed a nice bike, & I think the grunge look background suits it. The distance between them being so small, sadly means there is no seperation between the black of the bike at the front end & the background....what I would really like is some moody smoke/fog swirling in between the 2!
How to achieve that after the fact is sadly beyond me

[Mark von Kanel]

It is indeed a nice bike, & I think the grunge look background suits it. The distance between them being so small, sadly means there is no separation between the black of the bike at the front end & the background....what I would really like is some moody smoke/fog swirling in between the 2!
How to achieve that after the fact is sadly beyond me

Well i think i know the theory! i need to select the bike and put it on its own layer then i need to make it bigger in comparison to the background so im off to learn how to make a good selection! mmm fog???? ahh well one step at a time eh?

[Shadowman]

Nice, a lot of elements within the image to take it many different ways.

[GBO25]

Not sure about PS but in Elements you can make a "Layer/New Layer" via a drop down menu and in the dialogue box that opens you choose Overlay as the blend mode and tick the "fill with neutral grey" box.

Now when you select a brush and set its mode to overlay you can paint in white to lighten or black to darken whatever is painted over. Also by setting the foreground colour to shades of grey you can modify the amount of lightening or darkening -the closer to white the greater the lightening, the closer to black the greater the darkening. Using this method you could gently lighten the bike just enough to make it stand out better from the background or conversely lighten the background and leave the bike dark.

Mind you as this was in Romania maybe cloning in a bike sized Gypsy caravan would add a feeling of occasion

[Mark von Kanel]

Well i made a selection! its a bit rough but it is my first try and needs tidying up! used the pen tool which is difficult to use so i need more practice but ill get there!

[IzzieK]

Well i made a selection! its a bit rough but it is my first try and needs tidying up! used the pen tool which is difficult to use so i need more practice but ill get there!

Good start...now let us see where you are going with this. I will be very interested...now I missed my old red bike...boo hoo...

[Mark von Kanel]

Ok, Some of you may have seen that i had a little disaster last night and lost my work.... We i re did it and to tell the truth im quite happy, ive become quite adept at using the pen tool to make selections, ive also used layer masks (new to me) and adjustment layers....This selection as youll see is much much better than the last one!

Next im going to start on the background..... This is going to run into more than 1 week!

[IzzieK]

OKeedokee...we'll be still here when you come back...Good luck!

Ok, Some of you may have seen that i had a little disaster last night and lost my work.... We i re did it and to tell the truth im quite happy, ive become quite adept at using the pen tool to make selections, ive also used layer masks (new to me) and adjustment layers....This selection as youll see is much much better than the last one!

Next im going to start on the background..... This is going to run into more than 1 week!

[purplehaze]

This selection as youll see is much much better than the last one!

Next im going to start on the background..... This is going to run into more than 1 week!

Thank you, Mark. If you learned to do this in less than a day, then I have hope, as I need to learn it, too. Beautiful bike. I look forward to seeing where you take it.

[Mark von Kanel]

Izzie, Janis, im not actually sure where im going with it! But i am learning stuff in PS which is the aim....What i want to do is separate the bike from the background and then just add fog so ive removed the bike and now i need to alter the back ground do allow for separation.

No this is where im running into serious problems and im not sure if im doing it correctly so im hoping that someone will chirp in with one of those suggestions that prompts a DOH moment from me!! so here we go with the background.

Firstly i need to get rid of the whole that was left by removing the bike.... Some maijor cloning going on which ive done before but this time id learned the technique of using selections with the pen tool to make neater cloning edges. Because the idea is to take away the impact of the background but still keep the mood it wasnt necessary to be too fussy. Hopefully that will become clearer later in the edit!

so here is the first edit with the bike cloned out.

[Mark von Kanel]

Not sure about PS but in Elements you can make a "Layer/New Layer" via a drop down menu and in the dialogue box that opens you choose Overlay as the blend mode and tick the "fill with neutral grey" box.

Now when you select a brush and set its mode to overlay you can paint in white to lighten or black to darken whatever is painted over. Also by setting the foreground colour to shades of grey you can modify the amount of lightening or darkening -the closer to white the greater the lightening, the closer to black the greater the darkening. Using this method you could gently lighten the bike just enough to make it stand out better from the background or conversely lighten the background and leave the bike dark.

Mind you as this was in Romania maybe cloning in a bike sized Gypsy caravan would add a feeling of occasion

MMM caravan okayyyyyy...... Elements and PS are very similar i believe although im not very familiar with either!

[Mark von Kanel]

Now for the next stage, i wanted to make the background big..... and ive done that... infact i made it so big that PS wont save it and im struggling with what to do next.... back to google! and hopefully someone on here will help.

Ive gone mad with the cloning here, but again ive not been too fussy because im hoping that in the finished image the bike will be the focus and not the background. i doubled the canvas size and then cloned from the original to fill it all out. file size is now a huge problem, i cant save the file in tiff or PSD so i think im going about this in the wrong way...