PP Challenge #17 - THE RESULT

[Donald]

Voting in PP Challenge 17 has now closed. You can view the full thread here.

Votes were spread out pretty evenly across all the images, but at the end of the day, the clear winner was:

Peter
(conkerwood)

with

Congratulations to him and to everyone else for taking part.

Peter is now invited to put a post up into this thread telling us what he did to make this picture.

Also, Peter gets first chance to supply an image for the next PP Challenge. If he doesn't have a suitable one, then I'll trawl through my own stock and see what we can use.

[pnodrog]

Congratulations Peter you were up against some very worthy opposition. Yours one of about 6 on my list of picks. Look forward to seeing what the next challenge will be.

[captivating]

Wow, so happy you won Peter and I picked a winner!! denise

[conkerwood]

Firstly my apologies for not responding straight away. We have just had the tail end of cyclone Oswald pass through my area so we have had 600mm of rain and 100k/h winds over 3 days. This resulted in massive flooding (which thankfully didn't affect me) but 220000 homes without power, including mine. So after 65 hours with no power I am now able to thank all of those who voted for my pic and congratulate the other entrants, there was some really interesting pics this time.

The first step in building the pic was to extend the tiles along the walkway. It would have been too difficult to maintain the perspective while extending so I distorted the original tiles to remove the perspective. I was then able to clone a long section of tiles as a rectangle.

#1 Tiles as a long rectangle



I removed the doors and layered in the walkway and tower in the background.

#2 The Tower and Walkway



The picture of the busker was taken in bright light so I replaced the heavy sky of the walkway shot with something brighter to match. I then distorted the long rectangle of tiles to match the perspective of the original tiles and layered them over the walkway. I wanted it to look as if the tiles on the walkway were wearing and breaking up so I used a layer mask to blend the tiles and the surface together. I also made sure enough of the original surface was showing through so that the shadow of the railings was still there, again to match the bright day feeling. I then layered in the picture of the busker.

#3 The Busker (3 shot HDR processed in Photomatix)



I blended the surface of the street he was sitting in with the tiles using a layer mask to give the same worn look as the walkway. This also enabled the strong shadows cast by the guitarist's legs and body to come through. Finally I adjusted brightness and contrast of all of the various sections to match the bright daylight of the busker.

For me the key to making a composite work are:
1) Ensure that the light seems to be coming from the same direction and with the same intensity for all parts of the composite.
2) Make sure all edges are feathered so as to avoid the components looking as if they have been cut out and pasted in.
3) Ensure that shadows are there where the light would suggest that they should be otherwise the parts that are added look as if they are floating above the background.

I hope this all makes sense. If anyone has any questions I am happy to explain in more detail

Again many thanks to those who voted for me.

Peter

[RockNGoalStar]

A brilliant conversion... ...just the sort of thing I was looking for when I posted the original image. Very well done and thanks for taking the time to give a detailed explanation as to how you achieved it

[Jeff S]

Excellent work and a fine explanation. Congratulations, and thanks. Definitely a worthy winner.

[KingshukChatterjee]

congrats peter. excellent composition. but if you dont mind, I think there is a slight factor that challenges the naturality of the photo. the man's face indicates the sun is on the left of the photo, while the shadow of the fence indicates the otherwise...if that silly mistake was erased, it would have been an error-free master-piece to my eyes...

[Brownbear]

Congratulations. Beautiful photo. Thank you for sharing the how to, and showing how complicated editing is (to me). This comp taught me that editing is an art that can create truly beautiful photos. I enjoyed viewing all the great photos in this comp. Something about the putting things in or in front of the door, to create a different visual intrigue piqued my interest...

[Nikkij]

Amazing Shot - very very impressive

[Plumcrak]

Congrats Peter. Even more impressive once you let us know what all you did to create this