So, what do you think?

[Tony Eeds]

My first real attempt at photoshop ...

Original

My attempt

I know Thump could run circles around me and it took too long, but I enjoyed learning a bit of CS2. I liked this one enough that is was worth the effort.

I am sending a bunch of photos to Chad today, so he can use them on his website.

 

[Okiewan]

Good job Tony! Careful, the power of PS can consume you!

 

[Chili]

Impressive!

 

[trial_07]

Wow! Good job :cool: It took me quite a while to notice the difference between both pictures.

 

[fit04]

That is amazing for first real attempt at photoshop. I am a graphic designer so I know my photoshop stuff and that is very impressive. I think you should bring out more color though...like the red brick and the blue letters.

 

[Squid31]

Wow. Good job.

 

[letsride24-7]

Don't Jump puppy it's not worth it... J/k.. That is a great job for your first attempts..

 

[Tony Eeds]

That is amazing for first real attempt at photoshop. I am a graphic designer so I know my photoshop stuff and that is very impressive. I think you should bring out more color though...like the red brick and the blue letters.

I agree that it came out a little flat. It is hard to tell when I am zoomed in close enough to work. When I look at both side by side on the screen, I can spot the guardrail in both.

Thanks for all the input.

If I had thought ahead, I would have got the dog to back up a foot or so and the rail would not have been in the shot.

Of course, getting a dog to move is like herding cats or sweeping crickets.

 

[Rich Rohrich]

Great work Tony. Care to explain the steps on how you did it? I could learn from that.

Take a look at the Alien Skin Exposure plug-in for CS2 . It can do a lot of cool things, but one of my favorites is allowing you to emulate old color film types. I ran your picture through it and used the Fuji Velvia 100 ( one of my favorites for outdoor stuff) film emulation.

Here's the what I got.

 

[Tony Eeds]

That is darn nice Rich! I really like the color.

Basically what I did was zoom in and use a brush tool to connect the dots (if you will) across where the black guardrail was. Lucky for me, I had another picture of the front of the building, taken from a similar angle, that I could use to fill in the blank spots where letters did not completely cross the black line in the image.

I worked at very close range to get the image down and then used the clone tool and one of the sponge type patterns to blend the new with the original. It was kinda like using a sledge hammer, in a way to get the layout and coming back with a scalpel to clean it up later. :)

My biggest problem I had was the fact that I was working on a JPEG image instead of RAW. When I took it, it was just gonna be a shot for me. After Chad (owner) saw some shots I was taking, he asked for copies for his web site. I flipped over to shooting RAW at that point. When I saw this one, I really wished I had has a better beginning point, but we work with what we have, correct?

After my latest DS ride, I have decided to shoot only in RAW from now on. It will limit what I can do before getting back to my home computer, but so be it. I had been shooting large JPEG all the time and adding RAW, when I saw a shot that I wanted to manipulate.

 

[Rich Rohrich]

Thanks for the explanation Tony.

I'll agree that RAW is key. My second week with my Nikon D70S convinced me of that. I shoot RAW for everything now, even the throw away stuff. Some day I may even learn enough Photoshop to be dangerous. ;)