disposing of poor pictures

[K1TesseraEna]

Hi everyone!

This picture was taken in Chicago in 2009 with 4mp "point and shoot" camera. Although expectations weren't great, all 200+ pictures that day came out with the poorest quality imaginable.




Disappointed, I was about to delete them from the hard disc but at the last moment decided to do a lil' bit of experimenting.
After trying different GIMP filters, finally got something worth keeping.

Adjusted w/b, curves, desaturated, applied GMIC's light patches filter and tilt-shift plugin.

The final result. 'Mystic light over Chicago'




Now I always think twice before deleting photographs, no matter how poor their quality is.
I have dozens of other examples when pictures were given a 'second life'.

K1TE

[Esper]

great result !

it almost looks like a miniature used for special effects in a movie

[he4rty]

^^
Ditto

[Odinbc]

Here's my take.

[K1TesseraEna]

Here's my take.

Cool! I like it!

Here's another one

[2-ton]

This looked like fun so I had to give it a try....used Gmic to give it a sharper and almost illustrated look.
G'mic made it easy! on a duplicate layer I did Gmic>enhancement>dynamic range increase, then did local contrast enhancement, and put that layer on overlay.

[alc59]

Nice photo
I always try levels/auto on my photos first, which worked pretty good on yours
on this one i used fake hdr then unsharp mask, gave it some color, maybe too much

[K1TesseraEna]

Thank you, alc59!

This image is a tough one to get a good result with, mostly because it's jpg (no raw images ever existed) and low quality one.
I like your result, I reproduced you steps but muted colors a little bit.

2-ton and Odinbc got good results too. Everybody used different approach. That's great!

[Akros]

Hi K1t,

At first I just wanted to reproduce your results 'Mystic light over Chicago', but could not. Still, it was a good hobby try to get something different from the original photo.
The above results were very good, improved color and image clarity.
Maybe I should try a HDR technique I've seen these days, but I can not remember the steps and I was too lazy to look!

Thanks for the fun!

[smithaa02]

Like the idea of using artistic effects to salvage beatup photos!

Can't resist taking a stab at the photo myself with more conventional post processing methods.

Below is the best I could do.

Recipe:

* Manual Levels to fit the histogram to the edges, plus a midtone tweak that looked right.
* G'mic > Colors > Tone Mapping (using the defaults and not the fast method which is different)
* Clone to adjustment layer, then FX Foundry > Photos > Enhancement > Vivid Saturation (ratchet down to 50% opacity)
* Clone visable to new adjustment layer, then G'mic > Enhancement > Smooth (anistropic) (the best denoiser I know of...needed for the far background)
* Clone visable to new adjustment layer, then Filters > Sharpen > Highpass (less noisy version of sharpen) (ratchet overlay down to 30% opacity)

Picture isn't too bad and there seems to be potential with even better recovery refinements.

chicago.jpg (1.11 MiB) Viewed 3713 times

[Oregonian]

I am just totally amazed at everyone's results. That ugly duckling got turned into a whole flock of swans. Nice work everyone. Thanks, k1te; you gave everyone a new toy.

[Rod]

Great results folks!

[ek22]

My shot at it. I played with the colors a little, sharpened it and then tilt-shifted it with some layer masks and blurring. Would have been a shame to let this pic go to waste just for being a little washed out.

[sallyanne]

Had to try this. I didn't write down all of my actions but I got this.


Was fine at 100% but after scaling it down to upload a few of the buildings got lines through them again.

I think you all did great!

[molly]

They are all great. Kudo's guys/gals.

[K1TesseraEna]

Great results everyone!
I've learned a great deal about photo enhancement since I made 'Mystic Lights' almost four years ago and later added GMIC's light patches
effect.
Trying to salvage poor pictures can do just so much. Here is my latest try.



Looks much better (pretty much similar to smithaa02 result) but still just another boring photo
not worth keeping.
Trying to add some artistic touch to your images can turn them into masterpieces
like these focal tricks with Auto FX software





There are no bad pictures, only the luck of imagination

[ek22]

Well said. And those two other shots are also nice ones, even if they aren't perfect. Especially the motion blur on the second one.

[sallyanne]

Good pics. I also like the second one. Looks like you got him moving in mid air