DSS #19 unofficial FEEDBACK thread

Tango · February 23, 2009

here is the official gallery to give your C&C for DSS#19: http://challenges.smugmug.com/gallery/7314703_DURRP#471646319_YbTsT

This unofficial feedback thread is a catch-all of sorts, lets make it happen:thumb

This thread is:

a place to post a list of your top ten favorites. (be heard, and let everyone know what images moved you.)
a place to post your "the making of my image"
a place to ask someone "how did they do that?"(for us all to see:D )

richtersl · February 23, 2009

This one's for Divamum and anyone else who wants to know how to peel an ediface
First off, I had my doubts about entering this challenge because I could not come up with an idea. With no snow, anything in natural surroundings was in its ugly suit so I needed to think up something for contrived. I remember seeing a photo in an exhibit I was in that had a skyscraper in it with a peeling ediface. I though it looked really cool and thought I might like to some day try that. Well, some day came. I went into downtown New Hope and photographed a church steeple. I exposed for the building because I wanted the sky white so that I could easily select and remove the sky during post processing. I thought that might make it easier to work with the peeling effect.

So, here's what I started with:

I was able to easily isolate the church and remove the background. Then I did a little cleanup work and cropped it.

It needed some more "oomph" so I applied the perspective correction tool to it to make the building look a little taller. I called the layer this "straight". I duplicated the layer and called the duplicate copy "peeled".

Then the fun started!

I clicked the "peeled" layer to make it active, then selected Edit > Transform > Warp and just began playing with the tool to make it look like the ediface was peeling off. It took several tries to get it right.

Now I had to figure out how to the differentiate the two layers. I decided to play with Saturation levels. I made the "straight" layer active and boosted the saturation just enough to give it a slightly funky look. Next thing I did was to try and find some complementary way to contrast the peeled area. Per suggestions from this forum, I made the "peeled" layer active and desaturated by using the Channel Mixer. I liked the way the default Orange filter looked so I stuck with that.

So far, all we have are two layers with a transparent background. :whew

Now I needed a sky. My gradient sky and floating faces were a bit over-contrived so I needed to go another route. More on how I did that at the end. I found a blue sky from another photo and add it as a layer to that photo to see how it looked. It looked sort of ...

.

Then I remembered reading a "how to" thread by Sean (sherstone) on how he created that fabulous photo of the person in the fetal position and how he used different elements to create what he wanted. I grabbed my camera and ran outside. It was cloudy and gloomy. Perfect! So I took several photos of the sky and found three that I liked well enough to blend and make into one image:

This was the result:

It still was missing something so I found this tutorial on line to have be add light rays to the photo: http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-manipulation/ray-of-light.html

And this was the final result:

I flattened the cloud image, converted it to B&W, and then copied it as a layer into the church tower image. I moved it around until the rays looked right and here's what I had:

It still didn't look right, so I flipped it horizonally:

Hmmm...better but still missing something. I did a web search for PS brushes that are shaped like birds and found some, so I added some birds, dodged the front of the part of the church that faced the ray of light and burned the part that faced away from the light and there you have it!

Now, to give this a shot of steroids, you can use a gradient background layer for the sky, find a mannequin face and add it as a layer to the photo. Then set the blending mode of the mannequin face to "Luminosity" to get a creepy-psychedelic-contrived-look-on-steroids to the picture.

And don't forget to play with the saturation levels on the "peeled" and "straight" layers.

That's it! And what a trip this has been. I've never tried anything like this with PS before. And yes, I had fun.

Tango · February 23, 2009

yes!

dnie · February 23, 2009

richtersl wrote:

This one's for Divamum and anyone else who wants to know how to peel an ediface

Wow, I almost understood that! (really that is a compliment)
I have tried playing around with my nephews PS and have been shown how to use Gimp, but it has all been like a foreign language. Thanks for clearing it up some.

travelways · February 23, 2009

Wow Linda,

I knew you did a lot of hard work on your image but now I see that it was much more work
than I thought.

The result is absolutely fantastic and this is from far my #1 favorite of the contest.

Congratulations!

The Curious Camel · February 23, 2009

richtersl wrote:

First off, I had my doubts about entering this challenge because I could not come up with an idea. With no snow, anything in natural surroundings was in its ugly suit so I needed to think up something for contrived. I remember seeing a photo in an exhibit I was in that had a skyscraper in it with a peeling ediface. I though it looked really cool and thought I might like to some day try that. Well, some day came. I went into downtown New Hope and photographed a church steeple. I exposed for the building because I wanted the sky white so that I could easily select and remove the sky during post processing. I thought that might make it easier to work with the peeling effect.

So, here's what I started with:

I was able to easily isolate the church and remove the background. Then I did a little cleanup work and cropped it.

It needed some more "oomph" so I applied the perspective correction tool to it to make the building look a little taller. I called the layer this "straight". I duplicated the layer and called the duplicate copy "peeled".

Then the fun started!

I clicked the "peeled" layer to make it active, then selected Edit > Transform > Warp and just began playing with the tool to make it look like the ediface was peeling off. It took several tries to get it right.

Now I had to figure out how to the differentiate the two layers. I decided to play with Saturation levels. I made the "straight" layer active and boosted the saturation just enough to give it a slightly funky look. Next thing I did was to try and find some complementary way to contrast the peeled area. Per suggestions from this forum, I made the "peeled" layer active and desaturated by using the Channel Mixer. I liked the way the default Orange filter looked so I stuck with that.

So far, all we have are two layers with a transparent background. :whew

Now I needed a sky. My gradient sky and floating faces were a bit over-contrived so I needed to go another route. More on how I did that at the end. I found a blue sky from another photo and add it as a layer to that photo to see how it looked. It looked sort of ....

Then I remembered reading a "how to" thread by Sean (sherstone) on how he created that fabulous photo of the person in the fetal position and how he used different elements to create what he wanted. I grabbed my camera and ran outside. It was cloudy and gloomy. Perfect! So I took several photos of the sky and found three that I liked well enough to blend and make into one image:

This was the result:

It still was missing something so I found this tutorial on line to have be add light rays to the photo: http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-manipulation/ray-of-light.html

And this was the final result:

I flattened the cloud image, converted it to B&W, and then copied it as a layer into the church tower image. I moved it around until the rays looked right and here's what I had:

It still didn't look right, so I flipped it horizonally:

Hmmm...better but still missing something. I did a web search for PS brushes that are shaped like birds and found some, so I added some birds, dodged the front of the part of the church that faced the ray of light and burned the part that faced away from the light and there you have it!

Now, to give this a shot of steroids, you can use a gradient background layer for the sky, find a mannequin face and add it as a layer to the photo. Then set the blending mode of the mannequin face to "Luminosity" to get a creepy-psychedelic-contrived-look-on-steroids to the picture. And don't forget to play with the saturation levels on the "peeled" and "straight" layers.

That's it! And what a trip this has been. I've never tried anything like this with PS before. And yes, I had fun.

This is facinating and I love the final result.

Peace,gail

divamum · February 23, 2009

Oooo.... thanks Linda!

And thanks Aaron for starting a thread - official or not, I've missed these follow up discussions!!!

ic4u · February 23, 2009

divamum wrote:

Oooo.... thanks Linda!

And thanks Aaron for starting a thread - official or not, I've missed these follow up discussions!!!

What she said!!!

Linda that is so fascinating to me, even in my wildest dreams, I don't think I could pull something like that off. I really like how you put together your final image

travelways · February 23, 2009

Here is what I have to say about my entry:

While I truly appreciate a good PS work like Linda's, I prefer to stay with photos
taken rather than created.

I also prefer by far live photos rather than studio photos - I don't have a studio,
and I don't think I'll ever have one

This being said, I've been thinking every day for the past 2 weeks about the "contrived" theme,
looking for the best subject to describe it.

I shot, artificial fruit and vegetables, mannequins, funny sculptures, decorations, etc, etc.

Some days ago, I suddenly saw 2 mimes in a plaza, and I knew I'd found my subject!.
They where so nice and "posed" for me for few seconds (or less).

The one with the star painted eye, was more catchy, but the shots where far from being
professionally done, or good for a contest.

I had to crop them a lot to get only the head and focus on the star and I also had to change
the original cluttered background.

I also thought to use selective colors to emphasize the contrived elements; his eyes and the red lips,
especially because he already had his face painted white.

I sharpened his beard and some hair details to give a more "natural" look to the non-contrived elements.

With a lot of help from the forum ( thank you so, so much), I chose the best version and improved the
photo in a cleaner, more presentable manner.

I really liked the result and I was happy to see that others liked it too, so I posted it.

This is it:

Tango · February 23, 2009

divamum wrote:

Oooo.... thanks Linda!

And thanks Aaron for starting a thread - official or not, I've missed these follow up discussions!!!

and ive missed doing collages with pasted copies of my favorites from the round...
its just not as neat to write them out within a post...
i remember many challenges where i was not selected but a few people had my image in their top tens...and that gave me the pick-up i needed...
the collage is a easy form to express ones favorites without needing to write too much...(so for me that works great)

but somebody complained and our right-clicking was banned...

does, anybody have a solution?

anyway, maybe this thread will never be what it was in the past but will serve a new and maybe better purpose.... just as Linda and many others have done before...helping us understand what goes into a image!!!!!

for me i like to read about ones choice in adjustments just as much-so as reading about fancy layering and maskings.... i like to get into the mind of the creation, or Vision!

comments anyone?

btw, thanks for the PMs...just note a lot of what has been pm'd to me would be better on the forum because the comments ive read would/could do us all good...

Llywellyn · February 23, 2009

AaronNelson wrote:

does, anybody have a solution?

Can't you just embed the thumbs? E.g.,

? (Used the "insert image" button and copied the image URL from the contest gallery, editing it like I do my own photo links.

)

Grly · February 23, 2009

Oh poop! I just came here and saw this thread and I was all excited to go make my "top 10 collage"... I didn't realize that someone had complained!

Well, either way, these threads are still awesome! I love to see all the work that went into the entries. Amazing!

divamum · February 23, 2009

Llywellyn wrote:

Can't you just embed the thumbs? E.g., ? (Used the "insert image" button and copied the image URL from the contest gallery, editing it like I do my own photo links. )

Now THAT is an elegant solution.

My only remaining question: how do you make collages (now or in the past) without downloading them to your own hard drive and creating them in ::insert software of choice::?

Tango · February 23, 2009

photo-bug wrote:

While I truly appreciate a good PS work like Linda's, I prefer to stay with photos taken rather than created.

your missing out....creating a work with a vision is most rewarding, even if nobody likes it i have found to enjoy it even more sometimes after the comments are long gone...

Tango · February 23, 2009

divamum wrote:

Now THAT is an elegant solution.

My only remaining question: how do you make collages (now or in the past) without downloading them to your own hard drive and creating them in ::insert software of choice::?

teach me too!

ic4u · February 23, 2009

AaronNelson wrote:

teach me too!

Me three!

Grly · February 23, 2009

Let's see if this works! My top ten in random order:

angevin1 · February 23, 2009

divamum wrote:

Now THAT is an elegant solution.

My only remaining question: how do you make collages (now or in the past) without downloading them to your own hard drive and creating them in ::insert software of choice::?

Why would you not download them and then collage them?

darkdragon · February 23, 2009

You can go here: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php to make a mosaic of all your favorites without having to download them to your computer. You just use the URL of the image (the one you'd use for linking in a forum).

Here's my top 9

(Here is the thumb/link to that mosaic because that url will eventually change)

Llywellyn · February 23, 2009

Grly did exactly what I had in mind.

ic4u · February 23, 2009

My Faves
Hope this works.... Here were my favorites in the order they were submitted

divamum · February 23, 2009

Wooohoo! Multiple elegant solutions!!!!!

clap

Tango · February 23, 2009

ahhh...smart people...thank you for guiding me to a solution

here are my favs.. order of entry

Tango · February 23, 2009

ive got a question for everybody...
would its seem weird for me to state this: ....

there is no need to thank everyone everytime for "including" them in a top ten?

if thats weird, then let me just stat this.... if im ever ever included in someones top favs...just know im thankful, and im not going to post ...

is that strange of me?

Tango · February 23, 2009

my other thought... i made a top ten of images that i felt moved/affected me... does that mean the others are less? ofcourse not...

i wanted to make a statement for the sake of Art... right?

so that also should be assumbed by me and everyone too.... right?

nobody is forming clicks , sp? clicques? whatever////

richtersl · February 23, 2009

My turn!
My 10 faves in no particular order:

BillyTom · February 23, 2009

Here's mine.....no particular order...

Great job all!!:D

CWSkopec · February 24, 2009

Aaron, great job on starting this thread! I always enjoyed looking through the collages and "How-I-Did-Its" before the submittal system changed. Thanks for starting up the tradition again!

As for thanking everyone that puts your photo in their top 10, I agree... the thread might get overly cumbersome quickly, BUT... (there's always a "but"

) now that I've said that, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has put my image in their faves! I'm truly ecstatic right now about making so many top 10's! So much so that if it wasn't already 10pm and/or I had gotten more than 3 hours sleep last night, I would be grabbing my camera and heading out to get something for DSS #20 right now!

OK... I've gushed enough, time for sleep!

My photo was pretty simple, but if anyone's interested in the "nuts & bolts" of it, I would be happy to share tomorrow...

cmorganphotography · February 24, 2009

Top Ten!
BillyTom - Orchid Sprite
bfjr - An Unatural Position
karinaboese - Sign of Spring
psenior1 - lonely valentine
cornfu - "death metal"
ic4u - Gifted
Gir - Handmade
Michael Atkins - Frozen Sun Setting
sdways01 - "Natural Winter"
darkdragon - Man's Encroachment

There you have it folks!

Thanks dragon for including my valentine bouquet! I really think we should thank my husband... but I took the picture!

300m · February 24, 2009

Excellent Thread Arron! I do like the nuts and bolts of how thing are done and why. Thanks for starting the thread and thanks to Linda for the description. My shot was straight from the camera as the kittens were besides themselves trying to get to that plant we had just brought home. I am at work and cannot do a top 10 as it blocks stuff like that here., but later tonight I can.

psenior1 · February 24, 2009

Great thread and some very nice entries, first time I've entered the DSS comp (normally I stick to the mini challenges) but my favs in no particular order are -

DSS #19 unofficial FEEDBACK thread

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