It is really amazing what can be done in the “digital dark room” these days. Every time I embark on an photo processing exercise, I learn new things and it is what makes these projects so worthwhile. So I am taking part again in the monthly “One Photo Focus” challenge, hosted by Stacy Fischer at Visual Venturing. As the name suggests, all participants work on a single image and put their own interpretation.
June Image
This month the image we are all working on is by Stacy herself. In her words it is “a very overexposed photograph of the Mork & Mindy house in Boulder, Colorado.” The original unprocessed RAW image is on the left.
For those not familiar with “Mork & Mindy” it was an American sitcom that ran from 1978-1982. Mork was an alien from the planet Ork and was sent to Earth to study human behaviour. Mindy was his human friend and room mate. Mork was played by Robin Williams and this landmark property became a memorial for him upon his tragic death in August 2014.
Summary of my editing process
I imported the image into Photoshop and did the following:
- Applied a Curves layer to reduce the exposure
- Used the polygon lasso tool around the turret, which was still over-exposed
- Applied another curves layer to the turret to bring the exposure and brightness down
- The sky appeared washed out particularly on the right hand side. So applied a graduated filter to the sky and set the opacity at 30%
- Applied the polygon tool to the bottom of the house on the left hand side, then raised the brightness a tad as it was too shady
- Raised the saturation on the grass a little
- Saved the image as a JPEG
I then brought the edited image into Foto Sketcher for the next steps:
- Ran the image through the Oil Painting preset then tweaked the settings till I was happy with the outcome
Back in PS, resized and saved the image.
I am quite happy with the result. The image has texture and good colour, and the graduation in the sky has brought nice patterns and added interest. This was a good exercise in ‘recovering’ an image which might otherwise have been destined for the trash can. So thank you Stacy for letting us play with your photograph. And “nanu nanu” to all earthlings!
Do take the opportunity to head over to Visual Venturing for this June One Photo Focus challenge and check out other participants’ creative efforts. There are sure to be some very different interpretations.
Sv-Anui 
I like how you brightened up the photo. Wonderfully edited.
Thank you Cee!
Your June Image looks great lots of detail, from an amature camera man, I take two shots a month, keep up the good work. CHECK YOUR LETTER BOX, mail is on the way, Terry. Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2015 15:01:24 +0000 To: t29sweente@outlook.com
Thanks Terry😊
I am impressed. BTW I read your Dream builder article again and it really is well written. Thank you.
Thank you Chris… We will have to work on the sequel soon😊
Looks 100% better than before, well done, you can see the details of the house to better effect
Sue
Ah thank you for the feedback… You should check out the others on Stacy’s website… Some great interpretations there!
Pingback: Happy Anniversary ABFriday/One Photo Focus! | Visual Venturing
Hi, Chris! I’m finally able to sit down and spend some time reading through everyone’s wonderful posts 😀 Great Foto Sketcher preset you used as a starting point. The punch of textures is really lovely – even those swirling colors in the blue sky 🙂 I’m so glad you had fun with it, Chris. Thanks for “rescuing” my image AND for all your kind thoughts in your post and comments!
Hi Stacy – I am yet to do the rounds but there are some great interpretations I want to go and visit. It’s a long weekend here and we are sailing with friends, so late doing anything on the web. Thank you for hosting this special challenge. Really enjoying it.
No worries, Chris! Enjoy every second of sailing. I spent all day today catching up, and while it was fun, sailing definitely would win out in my book 😀⛵️
nice rescue especially of the turret!
Thank you Marsha! It was useful learning to adjust exposure selectively.
I think you were the one who introduced me to Fotosketcher. It certainly is fun to play around with but seems to take a long time each time I click to preview an effect. Anyway, I love this. Your color and exposure correcting were both perfect and I like the texture you added.
That’s such a nice comment Emilio, you made my day!
I really like your edit of this picture. I might have to check out this challenge for July. I like the idea of seeing all the creativity people come up with on the same image :0)
It’s good fun and a different enough from the One Four Challenge to be worthwhile taking part in. The July image is out so get into with Stacy to get the link!
I checked it out and I think I have an idea simmering in my head for an edit. We will see. I should probably write it down before I forget it! lol
I haven’t worked out what I am going to do yet. Funny, when the photo needs work, it’s easier than when it’s an already good image!
I’ve never really done much editing of someone else’s image. So this should be an interesting challenge 🙂 I can’t wait to see what you end up doing with the image!