PP Challenge #22 - THE RESULT

[Donald]

Thank you to all those who voted in this challenge. You can view the full list of entries here.

And the clear winner is:

Philip (MrB)


with

It's my pleasure to invite Philip to describe what he did and how he did it, and to provide me with a Raw file that we can use in the next challenge.

PP Challenge #32 will start up in a few days from now.

[MrB]

Thank you, Donald, and a big thank you to all who like the image.

The processing that I can do is fairly basic, using PaintShop Pro X4. Although it seems easy to use, it has many many features to be discovered and understood, including layers, which I have not yet learned or practised. Also, I usually record JPEGs and then tweak them in PSPX4, so I downloaded the JPEG version of the image for the processing described below.

As soon as I saw the challenge image, I remembered one of a father and son that I took at a nature reserve earlier this year, and I thought the two images would go together well. The challenge image was cropped 5:4 to remove the uninteresting part of the sky, and resampled to match the size of my image:



The levels were then adjusted to make the two images look similar. I then used the Smart Edge selection tool in PSPX4 to cut out the two figures and their shadows (without the tripod!), which I pasted onto the challenge image, using the fence posts as a guide to the place along the path where their sizes seemed to look right. However, the man's head was in the tree on the left, so I mirrored the figures, which also seemed to give a better balance. The saturation and contrast were then increased to give a bolder image:



For the B&W conversion I applied a green filter, which seemed best for enhancing the details and textures in the trees. Selective adjustments of the brightness and contrast in the sky near the tree on the left, plus a gentle vignette and a bit of sharpening, were also applied:



Almost finally, I added a tint to make the photo seem from an older time, before down-sizing and uploading to the thread. It was not until then that I noticed the dark shadow in the field to the right of the fence post, so I cloned it out and uploaded the amended image.

I probably did a few other things along the way, but that is as much as I can remember - all quite straightforward stuff really, but up to the limit of my skills at present. Still, I hope it might be of use to someone.

Philip

[Brownbear]

Congratulations Philip! Beautiful image... Thank you for sharing your process in detail, beyond my skill level right now but very informative and helpful to know for future.

[MrB]

Thank you Christina.

Philip

[Brownbear]

My pleasure, but a BIG thank you to you... I try these things to learn about post-processing and your detailed but simple explanation about what you did and why you chose to do so, is very helpful. Especially the why...

Thank you Christina.

Philip

[Wendy Stanford]

Congratulations Philip, wonderful image and great detailed explanation of how you achieved the end result.

[Jeff S]

Congratulations Philip. Well done and well explained.

[Ken Curtis]

Well done, Mr B.

[MrB]

Thank you Wendy, Jeff and Ken.

Philip