Took this photo this afternoon. Bit dark because of the lateness of the day and small because I took it on a phone camera.


I made it a little bigger and did what I could.
Anyone else is encouraged to do what they can with this.
I have snapped this tree before but this time I got all of the trunk. - best part I think.

sallyanne,

My answer to your challenge! (Beautiful colours in that tree trunk.)
I decided to do something completely eccentric. I used my favourite saulgoode Luminosity Masks - MM in this case. I modified it with colours & curves as far as possible to isolate the tree trunk and then painted the rest of the mask black.

I used colours & curves and hue & saturation to bring out the trunk. On the bottom layer I reduced the saturation almost to monochrome.

Opinions on the result most welcome!

david.

Your outcome is very nice David.

I came with these tries. But seeing yours David and Sally.... anyway I'm learning....

I have these photos to improve, too. I think that the deer photo is rather difficult to get nice colours, as it was taken without any preparation of the camera. The deer came out at once. That is a great challenge.

Issabella,

Three very different interpretations of the tree and all very good. In each one you have brought out fresh colours.
Now I shall attempt your latest challenge!

david.

The answers to my latest homework!

david.

Now it is my turn! A photograph of a 13th or 14th century village church on the Greek island of Kefalonia. The church was rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1953.

I have reduced the size of the picture so that it will upload and download fairly quickly.

david.

I couldn't resist yet another attempt at this one.
Defocus the background to make the deer stand out more clearly.

david.

Oh! Those results yours are really fantastic! And your last try blurring the background is so witty idea that I'll remember it. Also the warm colour on the trunks on the other pic is really nice. And the colour and the right balance got in the whole pic of the third pic is great too. Good Job David!
I did my try too (only with the deer, so far). Did I apply it too contrast and colour?
Then I did my try with your nice church photo.

I felt it necessary to get the front of the building vertical and to lighten the trees as the dark area was unbalancing the composition.

Kevin

You are right paynekj, it is currently balanced shadows and front walls. How did you do that?
I did another try on the previous original.

I copied to a new layer, which I used the Color>>Curves adjustment to lighten the trees, then added layer mask so that only the trees were visible from that layer.

I've attached the .xcf for you to see how it works.

Kevin

Issabella - I'm right out of any comfort zone I may have with glass/wood arty images, but I thought I would try your 'challenge'. So, apart from my Gollum images, here is my first ever attempt at properly 'enhancing a photo' ...

Lovely work on all the pictures, everybody. I am not a photographer but I thought I would try the deer. I adjusted white balance, used levels, adjusted hues a little as I thought the deer was slightly green.

Thank you so much paynekj, I got your attachment to learn your teaching.
OMG and Pat, your results on the photo are good, and I'm happy for your contribution.

@paynekj,
Great result - you also spotted the thing I missed. Oops!! I must learn to keep the camera level when I take photographs!

@Issabella,
You got a lot more colour in the deer than I did. Your "brushify" photo looks like an impressionist painting.

Everyone is producing good and interesting results - we must keep this up - I am learning.

david.

Here is my try. I have probably used a complicated method to get a simple result, but I like to see what works and what doesn't.

I also made the correction at the end that I should have made at the beginning - thanks paynekj!

david.

Now this is the complicated way of doing a simple job!

Import the image and duplicate it three times. (I like to have a spare copy of the original at the bottom so that I can do a comparison at any time.)

With the top layer selected, call the saulgoode Luminosity Masks. Switch off the eyeballs in layers menu and go to the channels menu and switch on the eyeball of each mask in turn to find the most suitable.

In this case it was DD. Duplicate the channel, rename it "trees" and switch off the eyeball of DD.

Go to colours & curves and moving the end points of the line until the trees and their shadow is white and the rest of the image is as black as possible. Paint over the remainder with black, and switch off the eyeball.

Back to layers menu, switch on the visibility of the layers. Add layer mask, channels, "trees".
Click on the image logo in the layer menu, go to colours & curves and lighten the trees and their shadows.

Make the second layer active and switch off visibility in the layers menu.

In the channels menu, duplicate LL and name it "concrete". (the path and the top of the wall are too prominent.) Don't forget to switch off the eyeball for LL - I usually do!

Again by moving the ends of the colours & curves make the path and the top of the wall as white as possible and paint everything else black. Switch off visibility, back to the layers menu and make the layers visible.

Add layer mask to the second layer using "concrete", click the image logo and use colours & curves to suitably darken the path and wall.

We want to keep the sky the same colour, so do a select by colour on the sky, adjusting the threshold value until only the sky is selected. Select invert and shrink the selection by 4 or 5 pixels. Feather the selection (5 pixels is probably OK).

Now with the third layer selected adjust colour & curves to your liking.

When you are happy with the result you can flatten the image and apply the perspective correction which should have been done first!! Thank you paynekj.

I have attached some screen captures to make things clearer.

david.

David, I thank you so much your explanation about how to do it. I will be able to learn from your tutorial and images. I'll practise it and learn it, too.