Fix It Friday Submissions

One of my favourite competitions on Steemit is the "Fix it Friday" contest run by the team @photogames.
This week i didn't get chance to finish all of the entries, but here are the ones i did do.

First up was this awesome Dani Diamond esq portrait by @caseygrimley

For this one i wanted to keep it somewhat natural, but give it that filmic look.
Here's the steps i made in editing this image.

1. First off I adjusted the crop slightly because I wanted the image to draw you more into her face than her body.
2. Usually i leave the eyes to the end but i was drawn to them on this image, so i dodged and burned her eyes. Adding some light specs on the inside and darker edges. Also darkening up the lids to draw more attention to the eyes. I finished them off by adding a little bit of blue.
3. Micro dodging and burning. On a 50% grey layer I used a 3% opacity brush to slowly dodge and burn out lil imperfections so that you get rid of blemishes but without losing the texture of the skin.
4. I added Frequency separation layers. But i also added a Blank new layer between them set to Luminosity, and a black and white layer above the HF layer. First step with BW layer disabled remove any remaining blemishes/ skin lines using HF layer then slight colour smoothing with the LF layer.
5. Turn on the BW layer, then with the brush at about 10% opacity Sample the skin colours (in greyscale) and paint over the skin to smooth the transitions. This way you retain skin detail but get rid of any harsh shadows.
6. I created a merge visible layer to clean up fly away hairs and hairs on her sweater. (Usually i would've cleaned this up earlier before starting the FS but i wasn't sure how far i was going to go with this image when i first started editing it.
7. General DB to draw more attention to her face. Darkened the surroundings etc.
8. I colour tone in many different ways usually but for this image i created a soft light layer and using a blue brush at low opacity i added colour to the shadow areas without effecting her skin tone.
9. Again i don't usually use this method but in interest of time i used a gradient map of teal and orange to add extra difference between shadows and highlights then reduced the layer opacity to about 30%
10. To finish it off i added a lil bit of selective sharpening to her eyes to make them stand out even more.

Here is the original....

Ok next up was this awesome wedding/ truck (although not in my version) / landscape shot by @jarvie......

Here's my workflow.

1. So i decided early on that i was going to remove the trucks from the image, mainly because i wanted to see if i could do it. So with that in mind my first step was to change the crop to include more sky. So i lessened the ground but moved upwards this meant however that i would need to increase the size of the sky.
2. To extend the sky i use the rectangular marquee tool to select all of the sky that was touching the rocks, then using the transform tool i scaled up the size of the sky.
3. Next using the clone stamp and the patch tool i started working on removing the trucks. I got rid of them quickly but i wasn't liking how the road was looking and because i didn't have any other source images to work from i decided the easiest thing would be to remove the road completely.
   
4. Added some DB to darken certain areas and make the clouds stand out a little more.
5. Added a colour balance layer and added a little red to the shadows, then masked this to the shadows using apply image.
6. Colour balance layer for the highlights, and again masked using apply image.
7. Wasn't happy with the overall light level of the image, was still a little too bright, so i added another curve layer and darkened it down a lot. But masked out the couple so that it didn't effect them. And this also helped to make the pop out of the image a little more too.
   8.Final step, add a little selective sharpening to the couple.

Here's the original....

Ok, moving on. This beautiful shot of Norway from @asgarth that really made me want to go there.

So this was actually a 3 shot panorama (all of which were slightly different exposures) So here's how i dealt with that.

1. Opened all 3 images as a stack in Photoshop. Selected them all then went to edit>auto align layers>auto. This matches everything up in the images to the right spots. But when it's finished they are all still different exposures.
2. So select them all and go to edit>auto blend layers> panorama This then matches their exposures
3. Next i selected the crop. I went for an anamorphic look as the shot looked very cinematic to me.
4. Added a curve layer to brighten it up slightly.
5. Cloned out some little details like the tree in the top left corner, the buoys on the water etc.
6. Added a black to transparent gradient over the sky on overlay blend mode to bring out some details in the sky.
7. Hue /saturation mode to alter the blue of the sky to make it a little more turquoise.
8. DB water and clouds.
9. Colour balance layer, adding blue to the shadows then masking it using the apply image technique.
10. Added a little yellow to the highlights using the same technique.
11. Added contrast using a curves layer.
12. Little bit of sharpening and finished.

The originals....

Only two more to go... Next up. @Derekkind's spooky house of horrors in the forrest. This was a great out of camera shot, colours were already really vibrant. So took me a while to decide what to do with this one.

1. The one thing that stood out to me when looking at the image was the sudden blue to orange transition on the water, and i knew i wanted to get rid of that. So i simply got a black brush and painted it out.
2. Using the same technique i did the @jarvies to stretch the sky. I used the rectangle marquee tool to stretch out the water that already was there. The i used the clone stamp to tidy up the edges. It was around this point i started to think of the movie IT, with the water running into the sewer. So i decided to add an origami boat to the river.
3. I used a Hue/ Sat layer and curves layer (linked to the boat layer) To make this blend into the existing colours. I also added a little noise to the boat.
4. Using DB i added a shadow for the boat to help it blend in. I also added the name S.S. Georgie in homage to IT.
   5.I experimented with trying to add pennywise into the darkened corner but i couldn't find a suitable image to use so gave up.
5. General DB layer to darken whole image.
6. DB layer to add a little texture to the cabin.
7. Added some selective sharpening to the cabin.
8. Added a teal and orange gradient to help separate the shadows and highlights, but reduced it to about 30% so it wasn't too overpowering.

Here's the original.....

Ok Last one i managed to get round to editing was from @aweber. Again i was unsure what to do with this one too. I started off editing it like a normal portrait but by this time it was 2am and i decided just to have fun with it.

1. So i started off with the usual DB layers, Some eye colour editing etc. Then i just stared at the photo for a while thinking what to do. I toyed around with adding more bokeh to the back, the i thought about changing the backdrop. And then i noticed his hat and though i wonder what i can do with that theme. So i went onto the NASA creative commons and i saw a portrait of Neil Armstrong that just got my sleep deprived mind going. So i decided to run with it.
2. Using a layer mask i added the head onto Neils Body.
3. I desaturated the Neil Armstrong photo slightly to match the look of @awebers.
4. Then i masked out the whole body/ head. I did this the manual way cause i'm a sucker for punishment. By that i mean i didn't use the pen tool and i used the brush tool. For some reason this felt like the right idea at the time. I think i was thinking that i wanted softer lines and that the pen tool would be too sharp.
5. I found another image for the background from the creative commons and dropped that in.
6. Quick colour balance layer to the whole image, and that was it.

Here's the original.....

Unfortunately i just didn't have time to get to the photo from @gabyoraa. ( So sorry). Looking back at my images now i think i was a little heavy on the colours and DB in a few of them, but what do you guys think? Anything you would've changed?

If you have any questions about any of the techniques i used then please feel free to ask.

Thanks again @photogames for providing the images to play with. :)

Instagram: @Jgalione
https://www.shotandcapturedby.com
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