Critiques

Mike (693) 2004-11-16 3:45

Hi Ziggy, There are several ways to remove colour casts in Photoshop, my personal preference is to use the levels tool (image/adjustments/levels), it's more user friendly than trying to alter an image with the color balance tool. When you access the levels tool it's initially set to RGB for overall levels, but you can opt to work on individual channels by changing to either red, green or blue. To remove the blue cast here change the levels to blue, then move the middle slider to the right until the overall cast disappears, you can also adjust the outer sliders to get exactly the look to the image that you want. You can alter the red and the green channels too, to achieve more subtle changes, I adjusted the red channel to warm the tones of the brickwork and the autumn leaves.

Mike (693) 2004-11-15 6:14

Quite a challenge this one, and quite a few steps involved, first stage for me was to remove some of the graininess, so a quick run through with NeatImage, though before I did that I doubled the size of the image to give the program more to work on. Loaded the output from NeatImage back into Photoshop, resized it back down to the original. Converted it to LAB mode and selected the lightness channel, there's quite a bit of hidden detail in the image, so I used levels to bring this out, the downside will be that parts of the image now become too bright, this isn't a problem though, solved by using the history brush to paint back the parts that had become too bright, back to how they were before applying levels. Converted back to RGB and desaturated. The right hand side of the image is pretty over exposed, so just to tone it down slightly I created a black to white gradiant fill on a seperate layer, loaded this in as an alpha channel mask and used it to darken slightly the right hand side of the image. Finally used the USM to sharpen the image, converted to greyscale and saved. Edit to add: Another version, this time full colour, I've FAR too much time on my hands today ;)

Mike (693) 2004-11-14 7:04

I'm fortunate to live just a few minutes walk away from a nature reserve where swans live, and spend a lot of my time observing and photographing these beautiful birds, your perserverance has done you proud here, I find the image has humour too with the perfect synchronisation of the pair, even down to the water dripping from the beaks, a perfect image.

Mike (693) 2004-11-14 4:04

I've gone for a hand tinted workshop Thanh, I think it fits the very strong image, very easy to do, full instructions with the WS.

Mike (693) 2004-10-21 19:55

I had to open this image up just to see what it actually was and rather nice it is too, simple but an interesting contrast of colour, nature, and manmade artefacts.

Mike (693) 2004-10-21 19:36

Some images just beg to be in black and white, this is definitely one of them, the shades and shadows which stand out so well here would be lost amongst the colours of the original I'm sure, though I'd love to see that version too, lovely image.

Mike (693) 2004-10-12 12:01

Hi Marco, Yes, a big difference in the two pictures, another tip you might want to practice is using the history brush in combination with the channel mask. The history brush saves a previous image state in memory, so, for example, if you like the results of the manipulation, but some parts are a little too bright (the sky for example), you can use the history brush to paint back the original even after you've manipulated it. There are some very powerful tools in Photoshop, it's just a matter of finding them!

Mike (693) 2004-09-24 18:52

"good sharp macro, I like the DOF and the colors, any good to eat?" Don't even think about it Francis, it's one of the deadliest mushrooms on the planet, though it has been used as a psychoactive drug for years, it's called Fly Agaric in the UK (Amanita Muscaria), the cause of several deaths over the years, for such an attractive fungi it packs a punch, nice image Gerard, good colours, maybe a bit of contrast to boost it slightly.

Mike (693) 2004-09-24 18:25

Sorry, I have to agree with dom_inik_m on this one, it's just not a good picture, for a desaturated image there are coloured blotches all over it (look at the inside of the pan), and it's very obvious that it's actually a composite image, not that I've got anything against composites, but it stands out a mile here, the corn has been stuck on top of the pan image, and a dropshadow has been added, shadows just don't look like that in real life, not sure whether the flame is real either, it certainly doesn't look it when you zoom in on the image in Photoshop.

Mike (693) 2004-09-17 9:59

Yes, fond memories of your doll images George, a blaze of colours and a great composition.