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ctfchallenge | all galleries >> The Best of CTF Challenges >> Best of 2007 > 5thlong way down by martin polanic
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12-MAY-2007 martin polanic

5thlong way down by martin polanic

Canon PowerShot A630
1/40s f/6.3 at 7.3mm full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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Martin Polanic 22-May-2007 06:42
Thanks again, all! aam, sorry if I gave you vertigo re: the post-processing, it's actually really straighforward. I'm trying to figure out where I might've caused some confusion... maybe the word 'dupe'?... as in 'duplicate layer'? fwiw step #1 and #4 can be ignored, they wouldn't make much of a difference in the final image. The rest is just tweaking levels and saturation to taste. I just like playing around in post to the point where I'm performing more than necessary sometimes, but still like the end result. Cheers! :)
alexeig20-May-2007 01:40
Great texture everywhere
ctfchallenge20-May-2007 01:15
nice
theFly
Brent 19-May-2007 16:26
Well it looks like good composition and all your processing steps paid off with a great looking image Martin. Looks very "arty" to me- nice!
Rod 18-May-2007 09:29
:-)
ctfchallenge18-May-2007 09:14
hehe.rod would love the frame and sig!
nice one
tom
ctfchallenge18-May-2007 01:47
Fantastic work Martin. I can't believe you didn't add a frame or a water mark after all that PP. -COAmature
aam1234 17-May-2007 21:04
I think I need to lay down after reading what you wrote, Martin :)

My PP skills are so primitive I didn't understand a word you said (OK, maybe USM). But I'll copy & paste what you wrote for future reference (when I get better at PP).

Thank you very much for the effort in explaining it.

Cheers mate
Martin Polanic 17-May-2007 20:26
Thanks for commenting everyone! Whew, the post-processing steps were I believe as follows:

1) slight USM pre-sharpening, prior to downsampling to 800px

2) a combination of curves and levels to stretch the histogram. Since this wasn't a high DR image it was easy to bring out a certain "pop" without obliterating anything.

3) brightness/saturation adjustments: desaturated the red and yellow channels (most of it was in the concrete) and darkened them to get more contrast and appearance of detail. Pretty much wiped out the magenta channel in the process as well, and desaturated the jeans with a little bump in brightness. This can simply be done through photoshops 'hue/saturation' panel but I'm doing it with an old version of 'icorrect editlab', which lets you apply these adjustments much more intricately

4) dupe layer, apply a free filter called "local equalization" from mehdiplugins.com, set layer to 'overlay' ('multiply and soft light also work well, depends on the image) and decrease opacity to 3%-5%... result is an exagerration of hardly-visible detail.

5) on the dupe layer create a mask and hide away any portions where the local eq. filter might not produce the nicest effect (faces, for example, tho some might like it)

6) original layer only: USM to taste (or whatever your prefered sharpening method may be). Here I applied a little extra just to create a certain feel or mood.

7) original layer only: local contrast enhancement... on an 800px image I usually just go for 10/10/0 but some may prefer more.

I think these were pretty much the steps, I may have adjusted contrast a little somewhere in between, can't be sure. Last steps of course are save as jpeg and whisk it off to pbase. Hope this doesn't sound like a lot to anyone and puts them off, it's pretty quick in practice really ;)
aam1234 17-May-2007 15:02
Martin, it would be nice if you can tell us what kind of PP you've done here, it looks awesome.
ctfchallenge17-May-2007 13:50
Impressive, beautifully detailed shot. To me, this has an appealingly ambiguous feel to it - more like a wall than a floor. Consequently surreal because of the obvious contradictions. I'm enjoying it a lot. -tv
Rod 17-May-2007 12:03
Excellent composition & I even don't mind the processing here as the shot works really well. Well done Martin:-)
aam1234 17-May-2007 07:39
:)
Martin Polanic 17-May-2007 07:25
Thanks aam, this little cam does a great job with exposure so I'm finding the images only need a little bit of pp, but yeah, this one's been juiced up, mainly to enhance contrast and to bring out some of the texture in the concrete. I noticed just now the red splats on the ground and am wondering if I should change the title to 'nose bleed' :)
aam1234 17-May-2007 07:06
Love the color(s), texture, and (correct me if I'm wrong) the PP. Good work, Martin.