Thursday, November 10, 2011

Edit Me ~ Week 25

In my quest to become better at editing, I have joined the Edit Me Challenge at http://editmechallenge.blogspot.com/ . Each week a picture is posted by a guest judge or the creator of the challenge site, to be downloaded and edited as you wish. I figure the only way I will get better at editing is to edit as much as possible, and be exposed to the techniques of other's edits. So here is the Edit Me Challenge for Week 25:

 This is a photo contributed by this week's guest judge, Misty, from Through A Photographer's Eye at: http://throughaphotographerseyes.blogspot.com/

 
Here is my edit of Misty's photo:


To start the edit, I opened the photo up in Picnik. I know Picnik is thought of as a rinky-dink photo editing program, but I love the Cloning tool and the Curves tool. So I used Curves to lighten up the photo, and then used a Curves preset, Polachrome Yellowed, to warm it up. After that, I used the amazing Cloning tool to remove the bar in the upper right corner and the miscellaneous distractions in the background. I wanted to draw all the attention to the tractor as it is the star of the photo : ) I didn't want to get rid of the toy in the foreground as I felt it told a story. I envisioned a small boy dropping his toy to the ground to climb on the tractor and pretend to be a real farmer. Therefore, I lifted the toy to the bale of hay for safe keeping.

Once I was done in Picnik, I opened the saved photo in Elements9.  I wanted to see what some textures could add to the photo. They warmed it up quite a bit and brought out the details of the engine parts. To do that, I used Kim Klassen's textures: Shades of November @ 100% soft light, Mayzee @ 60% soft light, and Serendipity @ 22% softlight.  Then I darkened the photo a bit with a levels adjustment to add a bit of contrast. Finally, I called it quits. I would like to say it was quick and easy, but the cloning took a bit of time, and I was doing a lot of trial and error along the way : )

I really enjoyed working on this photo once I got started. It reminded me of my roots in the farm country out east. Here is a progression of the photo from start to finish in the two editing programs.




Edit: Wow! I am proud to report that I was the overall winner!

Our tiny BIG Life

5 comments:

  1. This seems a brilliant edit to me.
    You've made every detail more visible and thrown a warm clear light over the entire scene.
    And doing it in two different programmes for comparison, is very impressive.
    And the way you played with the items inside the image is amazing.
    I really enjoyed your editing sequence. Thank you.

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  2. Cathy, the tractor, with your edits, is such a cool, nostalgic piece. Thanks for the notes on your editing. You are inspiring me.

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  3. Love the warm, whimsy feeling to your edit!

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  4. I'd like to get better in this area too! I use Picnik alot right now as I'm trying to teach myself how to use Photoshop CS. Your finished photo is beautiful.

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  5. Congratulations on your winning edit! If you have a button for your blog, feel free to email it to me so we can add you to the recent winners in the sidebar! :)

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