Curvemeister Forum

This image needs a large dose of Curvemeister magic.  Give it a shot and make it look as good as you can...

Greg

I'm here to learn curvemeister.... but as Greg knows. I'm a bit of a channel blending fanatic.  I'm anxious to start learning the curvemeister methodology however.

Lonnie...
Can you describe what you have done so far??
I know you might be frustrated but just know that we begin for real on Sunday and all kinds of curves fun is coming your way.  If you combine the curves with your channel blending you are going to be well off.

Greg

Ok - so this is super over-the-top, but I wanted to show how big a change you can get quickly and (in a few weeks) easily.

I created a mask (because the top half of the picture is in good shape already) by adding the light areas of the blue channel to the red channel. I inverted this mask, and then curved it (I made the curve steeper) to enhance the contrast (of the mask).

I have attached this mask to this post, so you can see what I ended up with.

Using this mask, I applied a curve that mimics Photoshop's 'Screen' blend mode (I'll post more about this in a day or so - you can check out http://twitter.com/curvemeister if you're curious in the meantime). This curve lightened the bottom of the image, but I needed to blur the mask to make this work properly (gaussian blur: 30px).

I applied the 'Screen Mode' curve twice (masked both times), to get the foreground bright enough, and finished up with a quick RGB curve to darken the shadows and brighten the highlights in the water. I think that the whole process took about a minute (you'll all be able to do this soon, so don't worry if any of that was a bit confusing - it won't be for long).

Again, it's probably overcooked, but...

Cheers,
Lee.

Lee you might want to create another mask and get some of the Cyan out of the waterfall.

Just a thought...
Greg

Hi

This one was easier and this is my first effort with this image, I will another go later bur thought I should post just for some comments.
1. I decided to use Lab remembering Dan Margulis  writing about canyons and Lab.
2. From the Masks Carte I chose Skin, I knew it would alter the green foliage but for the time being I could live that.  The shadow areas of the rocks and water were my main concern.
3. I will revisit this later in the weekend and have another try. I think it needs some colour work because so far it has only had L channel applied.

Di

Oh ok Greg.... I'm looking at the other posts  and realising I should be doing explanations.  OK here it goes. 

basically I start by examining the histogram and the first thing I noticed was the shadow slant of the histogram....  RGB was nicely balanced though.
so my first challenge was getting a bit of that shadow data into the midtones without upsetting the pesky highlights in the beautiful rocks and the waterfall.
So basically it was a luminosity task....  I love channels for this sort of stuff.  Just create the best possible black and white utilising
Apply image channel blending and blending adjustments and clipped layer blending modes and just pop it on top of the background in Luminosity mode.

I nervously boosted the color in LAB doing a simple overlay and replacing the L channel in the overlay... so just color is boosted and then appling an L channel mask and blurring it a bit.
The original color is beautiful so I didn't boost too much and I did do some painting with the art history brush in areas I didn't think benefited from the color boost.  and oh yes.... that waterfall really did turn cyan so easily.  I did do some color correction in that area as was all the shadow range in the water.  Couldn't modify that part at all.

so... funny thing happened....  all this explaining made me want to have another go at it.  Just to see what happens.

This ones a blend where I focused on that shadow detail.... particularly in the foliage...  I used the blue channel as my foundation in building up my luminosity layer.

I did a shadow highlight.  In Curvemeister, I boosted in Lab, but bent the A and B curves to prevent blue waterfall and the rocks going too red.

Lee you might want to create another mask and get some of the Cyan out of the waterfall.

Hi Greg,

My thinking in keeping the Cyan in was to try to maintain the blue/orange color contrast in the image. I think that completely neutralizing the water makes the image look a little flat - though you're right in that knocking the cyan back a little wouldn't do any harm...

Thanks for the suggestion  :)

Lee.

What wonderful discussion and work..Thanks Everyone...
I'll have 1 more image I hope for the open Session stuff and then Sunday we close the doors so to speak and get down to the real class work...

Here is a video solution for my version of this image.  I did not sharpen at the end and regret not addressing sharpening. 

http://youtu.be/31yjiaaW958

Greg