Matt Anderson Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Congratulations to Matt Anderson for winning Feature Thread of the Week with 14 votes - View Previous Winners
Along the River Etive near Dalness, Scotalnd, UK is this deceased Caledonian Pine ( Scots pine - Pinus sylvestris ) with Glencoe Mountain’s hillside in the distance.
Image Processing Notes:
Black and White conversions can be painlessly simple to infinitely complex. In my experience, to achieve my vision of "the final look", the process is never simple. Throughout the years, I've processed BW images with just about every technique available. For this particular conversion, the detail, similar tones, and file size were all prohibitive to an easy process. I've used techniques which isolate each of the R-G-B channels. I've also explored techniques that involve complicated channel calculations with multiple conversions, image layering, custom masking, 3rd party filters, and blending parameters. For this image in particular, I proceeded with the most basic of masking techniques, which, involved over 8 hours of meticulous pen tool work. If your not familiar, the pen tools is the most primitive of masking. Yet, the most utilized tool for masking in the content production, prepress, and premedia industries. Virtually all product in marketing gets a "clipping path" or path-mask made at some point in the post processing process. From those pen tool selections, custom alpha masks are made using techniques of blurring, brushing, etc, to match the edges necessary to isolate product that may not have a hard edge. ( DOF fall off, hair, etc..) All of this masking use to be done here in the US. But now it's all done off shore for pennies on the dollar. We use to run a 3rd shift of ten employees to do pen tool clipping paths all night long. 10 people, $25 hour. Now it's sent over seas for $1-3 per file.
So I painstakingly isolated the tree with the path tool from a VERY high resolution image. From there I made a selection of the background and a selection of the tree. Using smart objects and curves, I did separate conversions of each element. Precision is key. This file may be printed in excess of 40" x 60" depending on success with fine art clients.
10 36-MegaPixel shots stitched together
Taken at 220mm f/8 1/8 Second ISO 100
Final Image
Close up of the pen tool mask created for the custom BW conversion
Close up of the mask created
Original, Masked File, Final Image compared
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