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

great result !

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

^^
Ditto

Here's my take.

Cool! I like it!

Here's another one

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.

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

Great results folks!

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.

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!

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

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.

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