I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, so apologies in advance...

I was looking through the images in the gimpusers group on Flickr, and was thinking that while the images are delightful, it might be more fun to allow other users to see what different workflows might be like.

So I posted a different challenge where I've made available a base image for anyone to edit, and am asking others to try their hand at editing (as well as detailing what their processing methods were to achieve the final result). I also figured a theme would help make everything cohesive, so I've asked for everyone to edit the image into a B&W result.

I thought this might be a fun way for others to see a final result, and perhaps to learn something new about a workflow to produce it.

Because everyone is working from the same base image, it's an opportunity to judge the images based on the process, rather than just the content, and hopefully a neat way to learn.

I don't know how much overlap there is between users here and Flickr, so I just wanted to drop in and see if there was any interest here as well.

The discussion page on Flickr is here:

Challenge in GIMP - A Couple of Thoughts

You can grab the base image in that discussion page, or you can get it from my blog post:

patdavid.net: GIMP Editing Challenge

I'll probably post another blog post afterwards to highlight the winner, and to maybe talk about some of entries.

I'd love to see everyones work, and even better to see what different workflows are out there!

Sound like a great idea, Pat! I'll check it out for sure.

Near out of Flickr space Pat, so here's my b/w entry.

Not sure if may fit in the contest i used to test a new effect :

BETTER SEE BIG


Darken only 100.0 by PhotoComiX, on Flickr


Softlight 100.0 by PhotoComiX, on Flickr


Lighten only 100.0 by PhotoComiX, on Flickr

I don't have a personal flickr account (I know, it's on my list of things to do!) so, here's mine.

It actually was a really hard photo to get to look good in B&W; because of the bright light on the siding it was hard to show details like the door, doorpost.

I used the Brightness/Contrast and then the Channel Mixer...nothing too fancy here...

I think I did alright, though

Sounds like fun.

So I had a play, started to look like one of them foil pictures so I carried on in that direction, not on flickr so heres my results

Hi everyone!
Used to have Flickr account long time ago .... guess I'm just posting it here
I've called it Awful Graffiti. See actual size for details

K1TesseraEna, how on earth did you do that?

Firstly a confession. I've done this almost exclusively from the RAW file in Photivo:


I used some texture contrast to enhance the detail.
I've converted to B&W and applied a split-tone effect - purple in the shadows, yellow on the highlights.
Blurred the top right corner and overlaid a vignette to reduce the distraction and force attention onto the house.
Finally I applied a slight after-gamma curve to get the brightness/contrast to my liking.

In GIMP I cropped, re-sized to a sensible size for displaying here and sharpened.

Kevin

Very nice job Kevin.

Wow, great responses so far! I hope this has been fun!

GIMPers never fail to amaze me when let loose on things

lyle - the high contrast look is nice - looks like it might have been c2g?

photocomix - those results are wild! Pushing those functions really produces neat effects!

mariawendt - looks good! I chose this particular picture because it is tough to get a pull out a pleasing range of tones without blowing the highlights, or squishing the black details. Your bushes look good in the bottom, but the house seems a bit blown on the sunny side (I was having the exact same problem, btw).

everyone has really done great jobs (and it's really neat seeing the different paths everyone chose)!

I'll have my (more modest) version up in a bit.

Yeah, you're right. So, if it were you, would you just have left the doorway area darker? It was a really hard challenge; thanks for the honest feedback! I really appreciate it!

For me personally, I would normally want to retain as much tonal value as possible at first, then adjust curves for any global contrast changes after I've extracted a decent flat toned image first. For instance, the wood siding on the shadow side in your image looks fantastic - nice textures and tones that really accentuate the siding.

The sunny side has the siding blown out directly in the sun, but there is data there as well! I might have created a second layer and worked on keeping that high-key tone data in place, then masked it over the rest and blend in as needed. Probably adjust the curves on that side to try to keep it bright, as it should be, but to still contain tone and texture.

Possibly the same for the sky/branches that cross it (though the bark texture on the tree looks quite nice to me).

btw, this is just my $0.02 and purely subjective, so take most anything I say with a grain of salt

For the most part; some selective other things (particularly the sky to eliminate the noise) too.

Here's my (more subtle?) go at it.

• Immediately created a pseudogrey base layer to start with.
• Decompose to RGB, and bring each channel into the image as a separate layer.
  (I think this gives me more control over the tonal contribution from each channel with masking.)
• Masked off the sky, and let the blue channel dominate the tones there.
• Masked off the bushes at the bottom, and used a green channel with local contrast enhancement (LCE) via unsharp mask (varied opacity to taste). Also used another pseudogrey layer with LCE (bigger radius), and varied opacity (to add more "volume" to the bushes).
• Green channel with LCE, masked for the branches/leaves silhouetted in the sky.
• Another green channel with LCE, masked for the limbs/trunk of the tree (to bring out bark texture just a bit more).
• Finished it off with a grain layer Overlay.

Mostly I wanted to keep the bright side of the house under tonal control without blowing out, but still add a little life to the bushes on the bottom (which look flat in a straight conversion). I also wanted to emphasize a bit more the contrast between the sky and the branches reaching up there. Oh, and to emphasize the bark texture a bit more as well.

Still a little torn if the shadow side of the house is too flat or not...

Maria, hi!
Check your messages on this board or your personal email. Sorry it took me a while to answer.

Glad you made this thread, I've never really played with photos before, so its nice to have a set direction which this challenge gives.
Which makes me think a challenge forum on here could be a lot of fun.

Anyways I've had another play with the image....

That is very nice he4rty, it makes a person want to climb up that tree and just sit on one of those large branches.

no flickr for me either