My latest artsy (Topaz Adjust)

[plugsnpixels]

Here's a nice reworking of a scene I shot at Laguna Beach CA, done with Topaz Adjust 5.

I just posted an overview PDF tutorial here.

[HaseebM]

Nice one. Shimmering sea and coral reef like bank. Hope you updated to 5.1.0 version they released.

[plugsnpixels]

Thanks! And here's a "moonlight" version.

[Mark von Kanel]

Ahh now the second one is good but the first one im afraid just sends me boggle eyed must try this program, had it for to years and not used it!

[plugsnpixels]

That seems to be the general consensus, ha! Even my wife and daughter don't like it. But the colors remind me of the sea creatures in the tidal pool at this site. I guess you had to be there...

[plugsnpixels]

Here's a totally different approach (the "Matthew Brady" look), and my daughter approves ;-).

Done with Exposure and Retrographer.

[Mark von Kanel]

your daughter has good taste

[plugsnpixels]

Ha! I call her my art director... She's always had a good eye but now she's completed a college photography class and will be taking graphic design next.

[Mark von Kanel]

i think your problems are only just beginning then !

[plugsnpixels]

Nah, just getting worse! ;-) For a long time she has given me her opinions of my artwork and designs... And she's usually right!

[lukaswerth]

I am sorry if I spoil your fun, but for me the problem with all these filters is that they give you some ready-made molds which apply a pretty stereotyped imagery.
There is a German word for this: Kitsch.

Lukas

[plugsnpixels]

That's a good point, Lukas, and brings up an important question:

What does one do with an image? Straight out of the camera, it is "molded" in its own way (it looks unprocessed and like every other unprocessed image, i.e., "normal" and perhaps boring since we see the world in unprocessed color every day). If you adjust Levels, it looks like every other image where Levels were adjusted. If you add a vignette, surely you've seen that effect before.

If you do grayscale conversion, if you apply a film stock treatment, if you add a texture, if you add a split tone, if you add grain – somebody else has already done that with their own images, many, many times.

I guess part of the solution is to make your own frames, edges and textures, but the final results still fall under those well-trodden categories. That leaves only the subject and composition of the image itself to be unique, but we are not even discussing that yet.

If you want to consider art or music, every painting and every song is "stereotyped". Same kind of brush strokes, same beats, etc., yet people still keep making new art and new songs.

If you look through a bunch of photographers' online galleries, they all seem somewhat similar.

So I am not actually disagreeing with your point, I'm just not sure where to go once one realizes there is nothing new under the sun! ;-)

[lukaswerth]

Mike,

a serious reply deserves a serious answer. Let me first state that I feel half embarrassed for my prior post. It reads grumpy now, but all I can say is that I was trying to be honest...
But you raise good points which actually touch my interests. I use Photoshop all the time, and I wonder myself, and keep checking myself whether I am not just being led around by the industry. That is to say, my immediate concern is (and was in my prior post) not so much with originality/novelty, but with the dangers of consumerism. Photoshop is an industrial product, marketed in order to reach as wide a circulation as possible, and very successfully so. Its main target area, however, is probably where the most money is, that is, the world of commercial advertising. Not luckily in general, but luckily for me so much creativity goes this way in these days, so I am able to pick up the crumbs, bending Photoshop (or other software) to my own uses.

But on a more general level, in the contemporary world in so many ways our freedom, our originality, our very identity is shaped by the ideology of consumerism. Think about the phrase of the "free consumer", of how Ikea advertises its mass-produced furniture as a highway to individuality (the same goes for fashion clothes, cars, mobiles...), how we evaluate ourselves in terms of the goods and gadgets we have access to. (I could go on here also in terms of globalization, economics in general, the problem of ethics...) This is the context in which I used the term "mold" in my prior post: using something ready-made for a personal creation.

By the way, I haven't checked this now, but I am pretty certain the term "kitsch" became meaningful and coined only in the age of mechanical reproduction, as it - at least among other points - means a replica, to reproduce something with cheap, shrill materials, colors or sounds.

With regard to the point you raise, "what do you do with an image", I do think that a raw image necessitates a development, or editing, in some way, just as Ansel Adams once compared the photographic negative to a score which must be played, and therefore interpreted, in some way.

And you are right, difficult to produce something new in these days, but perhaps one could substitute "novelty" with "sincerity" - in the sense that there is nothing more serious than good satire and humor...

Whatever, I wish you fun with your conversions,

Lukas

[plugsnpixels]

Lukas, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. And your original reply was fine; you had an opinion, justified it and it inspired me to stop and think about it.

You mentioned "consumerism", and in terms of post-processing, that reminds me of the cheesy greeting card-type frames and gaudy borders and other such decorations that come with Microsoft Word or low-end mom-and-pop photo apps. Surprisingly enough, plenty of people use and enjoy such things, and I would side with you that perhaps people would be better off moving on from that.

As for the more "professional" effects such as texture overlays, grunge/sloppy frames and such, I still feel they offer a lot of additional impact on the viewer of a treated image. I see many fine-art print photographers using them to "artisfy" their images, and IMO the effect makes them "display worthy". (Here is a quickly-Googled example of what I mean regarding sloppy borders, though I admit the examples are a bit dated. Perhaps the trend today is more of a multiple-matted look or thin solid black edge, etc.)

Funny, on another forum I posted the same images as above and the consensus is the over saturated one is a bit over the top (though Haseeb here liked it!) and the Matthew Brady version (which Mark here liked and you didn't) "has a very cool look to it".

So like I said, it all comes down to the viewer of the image, the listener to the music, the watcher of the play, etc.

[lukaswerth]

Mike,

With regard to the "over saturated one" on a technical note: I suppose you used an HDR-effect here together with some blur t create what they call an "Orton effect".

If I had to chose between your pictures, for me this one is the most interesting because it gives some surreal flair to te scene; reminds me somewhat of the scene in the movie "contact" where Jody Foster comes to a new world, also a sea shore if I recall correctly.

And by the way, I also use some HRD layering all the time (in Photoshop) to bring out details.

Lukas

[plugsnpixels]

Thanks Lukas, I like the "fantasy" look of it myself. I did this in Topaz Adjust only, pushing the color and diffusion settings beyond what I would normally use.

I do not like the way over-saturated HDR look on old cars and planes and general scenics though. The sparkly water and colorful coral reef made this particular image's treatment work, IMO.

I don't think I watched Contact and Google didn't reveal the particular scene you were referring to.

[IzzieK]

Mike...my vote goes to the last one you posted...sepia-like. exceptional.

[plugsnpixels]

Thanks Izzie! BTW, here's a new one I created with Adjust first (to pop the image) and Exposure (to add the focus, tone and edge effects).

My goal was to produce something more moderately post-processed yet still quite different from the bland original.

[IzzieK]

#2 looks better, Mike...I had bought Topaz because of the images you upload and I am happy with it. Thanks.

[plugsnpixels]

I'm glad you found it a useful tool! It's almost too easy to use ;-).