All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Stratford by the River

Matts on 2006-06-23T20:52:05

That's Stratford Ontario, of course.

Image

Original here

Yes.

Simon on 2006-06-23T22:33:04

OK, now, that's a beautiful shot. At first I thought the smooth look of the river was due to a long exposure, but then I looked at the figures on the left, and realised it couldn't be. I see you've stripped the useful EXIF tags - what sort of post-processing happened on this?

Re:Yes.

Matts on 2006-06-23T22:44:42

First of all you can see the original by removing the _pp from the URL.

There are a number of layers gone into this:

1) A graduated layer selection of the top of the picture to darken down an over-bright sky and provide some colour. I think that contributed horribly to the artifacts you see in the image (blue blotches in the trees) and I'm considering removing that layer.

2) LAB Curves colour enhancement (making the a and b channels steeper) layer

3) 3 layers selecting the river...

    On the first, I think I just left as-is so I could copy again if I needed it.

    On the second, this was my blur layer. I used multiple blurrings in succession, first motion, then gaussian, then motion again and so on. The idea being to emulate that long exposure look. (motion blur in the direction of the river, obviously).

    On the third, a bit of smart blur, and overlay mode set to Soft Light.

4) Finally there's a vignetting selection done using the lasso to darken the edges.

I think I'll keep working on this though - I'm not happy with it.

Re:Yes.

Matts on 2006-06-23T22:53:44

OK, here's a version I think I like better. The water blur never looked realistic enough for me.

Re:Yes.

Simon on 2006-06-23T23:42:13

That's a much lighter editing touch, it just highlights what's there instead of trying to create. I do like that one, but on the other hand I think you're going to do well to improve upon the unprocessed image.

Re:Yes.

Matts on 2006-06-24T03:39:36

That's an interesting point, and I almost think you should be more critical (are you being kind?) - if you prefer the unedited version please say so. Sometimes I think I go too far.

Suggestions

Aristotle on 2006-06-24T05:32:50

I like the original better than either post-processed version. The green looks too sweet after processing. The tunnel vision also takes away from the picture noticably, IMHO.

The only thing I don’t like about the original is that the water looks so dull with that shade of brown. If you could just drain its murkiness a bit you’d have a winner.

Colour enhancement for the image as a whole might work, but you’d have to go much lighter on it than with the processed versions you posted. They look too candycoloured sweet.