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Thread: 731 Lexington Ave New York

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    731 Lexington Ave New York

    A fisheye image of a columnar building; shooting straight up at night.

    731 Lexington Ave New York

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    Wavelength's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Great

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Very creative Manfred, my first thought was that it has a Spaceship/Star Wars look and feel to it.
    The use of a fish eye lens has worked very well with the structure and lights of the building, well done.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Wonderful picture Manfred,
    I tried to reduce the noise level with Topaze denoise AI, I think this picture worth it


    731 Lexington Ave New York
    Last edited by bje07; 9th January 2021 at 03:30 PM.

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    Wavelength's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    In this image, it will be an added beauty if the clouds were brightened up, unlike in the Dan's image of another building....i feel that way

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by ST1 View Post
    Very creative Manfred, my first thought was that it has a Spaceship/Star Wars look and feel to it.
    The use of a fish eye lens has worked very well with the structure and lights of the building, well done.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
    Thanks Peter - that was my view as well and the SOOC shot with mixed lighting didn't give me that effect. That's why I had another go at this image and really worked the local colour casts to get that sci-fi look. This is the image I started with.


    731 Lexington Ave New York

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by bje07 View Post
    Wonderful picture Manfred,
    I tried to reduce the noise level with Topaze denoise AI, I think this picture worth it
    Thanks Jean - I had done a fairly aggressive noise reduction on the posted image. I'll go back and try a slightly different approach. The dark building and sky are the areas I will have to target some more.

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by Wavelength View Post
    In this image, it will be an added beauty if the clouds were brightened up, unlike in the Dan's image of another building....i feel that way
    We all have views and opinions Nandakumar, but in this case, I don't agree with your approach. In fact I downplayed the clouds in my post-processing because I wanted them to add a bit of texture, but not compete with the rest of the image. I want the viewer's eyes to lock to the blue light at the top of the building at the 3 o'clock position.

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Very cool image. Love the sci-fi effect.

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Very interesting. How did you do the color changes? It doesn't look like a simple cooling. It looks more like substitution of specific hue ranges.

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by DanK View Post
    Very interesting. How did you do the color changes? It doesn't look like a simple cooling. It looks more like substitution of specific hue ranges.
    I see almost the "Teal and Orange" effect so much favored by cine colorists - but what would have been Teal tending in the direction of Green.

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by DanK View Post
    Very interesting. How did you do the color changes? It doesn't look like a simple cooling. It looks more like substitution of specific hue ranges.
    I assumed that there were two main, distinct light sources that created the orange and green areas of glass. I white balanced those areas individually and then used layer masks to blend the two "neutral" areas together. I initially had a third layer, the sky, but found it worked better when I desaturated that part of the image.

    I've used this technique before for night scenes where there were two or more significant different colour temperature light sources.




    Here is the WB for the teal colour:

    731 Lexington Ave New York



    And here is the WB for the green colour:

    731 Lexington Ave New York


    That gave me a good base to proceed with as I liked the impact that the colours in the other areas had. I did a bit of local desaturation of some channels to calm down the "hot spots".

    From a technical standpoint, I did one of the raw conversions and opened the image as a SmartObject in Photoshop. From there I did a "New Smart Object via Copy" to create the second layer. Working as a SmartObject gave me a bit more flexibility as I tried slightly different areas of the glass to pull a neutral WB.
    Last edited by Manfred M; 10th January 2021 at 03:56 PM.

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by xpatUSA View Post
    I see almost the "Teal and Orange" effect so much favored by cine colorists - but what would have been Teal tending in the direction of Green.
    I had originally worked in that direction when I did my first edit, for very much the reason you have given. I just didn't like where this ended up; a warm spike from tungsten lights and a green spike where fluorescent lights were in use.

    I also had this vision that there was a sci-fi outer space look to the subject matter, so I felt that a cool to neutral toned image might be an appropriate direction to go.
    Last edited by Manfred M; 10th January 2021 at 03:49 PM.

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by Manfred M View Post
    I had originally worked in that direction when I did my first edit, for very much the reason you have given. I just didn't like where this ended up; a warm spike from tungsten lights and a green spike where fluorescent lights were in use.

    I also had this vision that there was a sci-fi outer space look to the subject matter, so I felt that a cool to neutral toned image might be an appropriate direction to go.
    As an aside; a cine colourist is also referred to as a colour timer or a colour grader. The last is the most current use. Colour timer refers to the film days when time the graded effect came from timing the film development process to get the colour effect.

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Really keen perspective and great processing to bring together a fine piece.

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    I love it. I agree regarding your choice of colours. Sometimes warm colours do not work, in an abattoir for example.
    Cheers Ole

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by Wavelength View Post
    In this image, it will be an added beauty if the clouds were brightened up, unlike in the Dan's image of another building....i feel that way
    I had someone else, on another forum make a similar comment, so I went back to have another look at your suggestion.

    731 Lexington Ave New York


    I was originally thinking that the blue light was the key draw, and when I enhanced the clouds, I had to brighten that part up too. Clicking on the image and opening it in LightBox is the best way to review the updated edit.

    Thoughts?
    Last edited by Manfred M; 11th January 2021 at 03:53 PM.

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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by Manfred M View Post
    I had someone else, on another forum make a similar comment, so I went back to have another look at your suggestion.

    731 Lexington Ave New York

    I was originally thinking that the blue light was the key draw, and when I enhanced the clouds, I had to brighten that part up too. Clicking on the image and opening it in LightBox is the best way to review the updated edit.

    Thoughts?
    For me, the clouds now draw the eye just a little, not a lot though.


    An unrelated thought, Manfred. Could you please comment on the vertically elliptical appearance?

    Fergeddit, I found the reason in Maps:

    https://www.google.com/maps/search/7...=en&authuser=0
    .
    Last edited by xpatUSA; 11th January 2021 at 06:05 PM. Reason: added answer to ellipse question

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    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by xpatUSA View Post
    An unrelated thought, Manfred. Could you please comment on the vertically elliptical appearance?

    Fergeddit, I found the reason in Maps:

    .
    Architects are strange beasts. I had worked with several over a number of years during my working career and found their designs to be "interesting" in both an intellectual and technical way.

    The creative process is both a wondrous and scary at the same time...

    From an image standpoint, I remember finding it interesting how a fish-eye lens created a fairly circular effect at the bottom, but the central portions being fairly accurate. There is nothing obvious in the image the screams out "fisheye".

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    Wavelength's Avatar
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    Re: 731 Lexington Ave New York

    Quote Originally Posted by Manfred M View Post
    I had someone else, on another forum make a similar comment, so I went back to have another look at your suggestion.

    731 Lexington Ave New York


    I was originally thinking that the blue light was the key draw, and when I enhanced the clouds, I had to brighten that part up too. Clicking on the image and opening it in LightBox is the best way to review the updated edit.

    Thoughts?
    I liked this new version even more; it has added mysterious effect now!!!

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