My first thot was to crop to make the image simpler and to make the artwork the main subject. Saturated the blue to richen the sky, and the yellow to do the same with the rocks. Cloned out the wires on both sides. Selected the ironwork and applied levels to lighten up, and then did a sharpening with unsharp mask. All this in Photoshop CS.
I'm not sure that this is what you're looking for since I cropped out most of the picture.
I was able to narrow the Indian down almost to the pixel using the magic wand tool with a tolerance of 35 and just kept the shift key held down and clicked on parts of the indian until I had the whole thing selected. If I hit a part that went beyond the borders I just clicked back a step in the history menu to erase the erroneous selection. I then went to "Refine Edge" and zeroed out all the menu items and upped the feathering just enough to smooth the transition every so minutely. I didn't go too far because he's against a sky so a sharp edge is called for here. Everything else I left at zero. No halos.
Alan - I like the way you pulled out the sculpture. BTW, I'm not looking for a 'school solution' , my thought was let's see how others choose to visualize and improve upon a ho-hum image. I hope others learn as have I from the information you and they are including a description of your workflow.
perspective - thanks for the details. Patience is not one of my strong suits - I bailed when the selection started picking up tones in the rock base. I'll go back and practice your approach, plus, reading some detail on how to properly use the magic wand might help
Bob Jarman wrote:
Alan - I like the way you pulled out the sculpture. BTW, I'm not looking for a 'school solution' , my thought was let's see how others choose to visualize and improve upon a ho-hum image. I hope others learn as have I from the information you and they are including a description of your workflow.
perspective - thanks for the details. Patience is not one of my strong suits - I bailed when the selection started picking up tones in the rock base. I'll go back and practice your approach, plus, reading some detail on how to properly use the magic wand might help
Bob, when that happens just grab the lasso tool and hold down the ALT key (if using a PC) and de-select the areas you don't want selected. Then you can switch back to the magic wand. If it keeps going out of bounds you can decrease the tolerance amount.
Thanks for your input - perhaps it's a gross over simplification but from what you've described, I think I'd be well advised to learn to properly apply the simple tools rather than continually look for a 'silver bullet'.
Does anyone else want to offer a candidate to be fixed up?
Bob, selecting and deselecting in PS is really quite simple, once you understand the basic selection tools - magic wand, lasso, whatever. After making an original selection over a part of your image, you can add or subtract from that selection by simply applying the same tool (or any selection tool for that matter) in conjunction with the shift key for adding to the selection, or with the alt key for subtracting, respectively. In each case you will see a small "+" or "-" along side the tool icon when the shift key or alt key are pressed.
Another trick to remember is to use the invert selection command (in the drop down). An example here would be when you want to select everything but the sky in an image. Select the sky first with the magic wand - making several picks if necessary to capture all of the sky - then invert the selection.
Try it, you'll be amazed at how straight forward it is.
thanks for the kind comment. I'm hoping too that others will post images to see the many ways they can be processed. At first I thought the idea a bit OT but folks over in post-processing, where I mostly lurk, are more into the technology end of things. I'm learning from the exercise and I hope others do also. I'm glad others were/are willing to contribute, especially since this forum seems to have many time the views as it does posts - and, more importantly, unlike some other sites/forums, posts are positive, supportive, and constructive. A nice group of folks to be around
Alan -
thanks for the help re selections and magic wand. I really need to study tolerance settings and learn how to feather things - in summary, slow down I selected the Indian but began picking up areas of the base and at that point punched out to try another approach. I've also followed a tutorial that made use of inverting the selection but didn't transfer that technique into long-term memory - need to revisit that too as it can be very effective.
Just a general thought:
As new images are presented for FixMeUp, are we better off appending them to the current thread, or starting a new thread (eg FixMeUp2, ...3, etc). Which method is most likely to grab attention, attract others comments, and make it possible to identify new posts/directions?
Scott -
Probably starting the next sequence in the thread, ie FixMeUp2. It's more focused that way and easily identifiable.
Hopefully by this time, given the large number of views, our intent is embedded in the name. I know over on the Nikon forum there are several threads of the "Post Your Favorite...." variety with well over several hundred (in one case over 1000s) of posts. Unless I'm really interested, the large number of posts, imo, becomes a disincentive to view and engage.
Yeah, I prefer the FixMeUp2, etc approach. If I'm really interested, I will read the latest add-on to a thread automatically. But knowing its a new image in process would help and I think work better.
Scott
Yeah, I prefer the FixMeUp2, etc approach. If I'm really interested, I will read the latest add-on to a thread automatically. But knowing its a new image in process would help and I think work better.
Scot
so get screen shots you can also on the selected window press ALT Print Screen, and paste it in a new PS file.
pressing alt and not just print screen copys just the top window.
, my thought was let's see how others choose to visualize and improve upon a ho-hum image. I hope others learn as have I from the information you and they are including a description of your workflow.
