Let the fun begin....

[ggroess]

This is a fairly straight forward image. 
Make it look as good as possible but keep the crusty exterior and texture as much as possible.

When you post your image please describe a bit about what you did to improve the image and as much as you can about why.

Greg

[imported_BoydMac]

Well here is my first attempt.  I just set the highlite, black point and neutral.  I tried other things but was not successful and further improving the image.  I wanted to bring out the grass more and the water but could not find settings that didn't do more damage than good.  Because you mentioned keeping the texture I thought of a microcontrast adjustment that is available in Photomatrix - another program that I don't know how to use - so I gave it a try and got the second example.  Somehow it brought out the grass and water but it also added a magenta cast to the shadow detail in the cockpit window.  The only reason I mention this diversion is that I'm sure CM can give me the grass and water effects and would like to know how. - Boyd

[imported_BoydMac]

Here is the image after adjustment with CM

[imported_ganna]

Here's my attemt. Unfortunately my "pins" function in CM does not work.(Already written to Mike) I am not sure about the colour of the vessel, but used the white foam as a neutral and then the colour of the sky and of the grass appear to be within OK range.

[Chris Nicola]

Here is my take using PS Elements. I have CM but did not use it for adjusting the picture although I am sure all the adjustments can be done a lot more quickly and easily using CM and I would like to learn how.

1 Levels adjustment moving the slider on the right to the foot of the mountain.
2 Shadows adjutment to +10
3- Midrange contrast adjustment to +15 to give thepicture more "bite"
4- Seleted the sky with the magic wand tool, feathered one pixel  get beter blend, and darkened to minus -50 so as to make the boat more prominent
5- Increased hue and sturaton to +15 toimprove colour
6-Corrected yellow colour cast by clicking on the white area on the left side of the boat.  The shadows still lookd a bit yellow so using colour variations in PSE I increased the blue in the shadows a bit.
7-Used USM at radius 1 and 100% to sharpen the image

Kind Rgards

Chris Nicola

(Guest for the first week)

[mikemeister_admin]

For the boat I wanted red rust,some bleached white paint spots,green grass and blue skies.GregM

  1 shaped the  lightness line in Lab,little color boost
  2 boost to a channel for rust,less boost to b
  3 edge sharpening action to get line drawing of boat
  4 touch up in RGB,dial back yellow and magenta

[mikemeister_admin]

A rethink of the original image.I wanted the advantages of shadow/highlights in CS4,but to stay in curveM.Also,how different are the colors of the deckhouse and the pilothouse,pure white and very light grey?First time around I tried to get a neutral from the deck structures but wasn't happy with result.GregM

  1 in HSB I did a threshold for brightness,then located the deckhouses along the line,last spike in histogram to right,then pinned the area to the left and below,then a bit more of a boost to the houses.
  2 in LabI put a neutral (no shadow or hilight)just below the first window of the pilothouse.Chris Nicola was able to get neutrals on these houses.Very slight saturation boost.
  3 sharpening as above

Image2. as per Greg's suggestion.Curve in b channel to hold blue back a bit

[ggroess]

Here is the image after adjustment with CM

Boyd,  excellent so far...the part that is missing from this image is color saturation.  When you curve in LAB the saturation tends to fall off the image. 
Attached is your posted image with saturation added in less than 5 seconds using the saturation slider at the bottom of the curves window in LAB.

Greg

[ggroess]

Here is my take using PS Elements. I have CM but did not use it for adjusting the picture although I am sure all the adjustments can be done a lot more quickly and easily using CM and I would like to learn how.

1 Levels adjustment moving the slider on the right to the foot of the mountain.
2 Shadows adjutment to +10
3- Midrange contrast adjustment to +15 to give thepicture more "bite"
4- Seleted the sky with the magic wand tool, feathered one pixel  get beter blend, and darkened to minus -50 so as to make the boat more prominent
5- Increased hue and sturaton to +15 toimprove colour
6-Corrected yellow colour cast by clicking on the white area on the left side of the boat.  The shadows still lookd a bit yellow so using colour variations in PSE I increased the blue in the shadows a bit.
7-Used USM at radius 1 and 100% to sharpen the image

Kind Rgards

Chris Nicola

(Guest for the first week)

Greetings Chris,
A nice correction.  you solved most of the issues with the image except the shadows.  You are correct in that most of the work you did could be done in fewer steps in CM and I'll provide a more detailed sample of that after a few more people have a swing at this image. 

For your posted image I would use the Blue channel and adjust only the area of the curve that controls the shadows.  Since the color cast is worse in that area.  In RGB color and lightness are linked so you can use the Blue channel to get rid of the cast without too much effect on the other colors.  I noticed that when I fix the shadows the other colors snap much more as well.  I'm betting a better choice for your neutral would help the image overall.

Notice the Hue Clocks in the image they show both before and after adjustment values for the sample point.  unlike PS or PSE you can set multiple hue clocks on an image and watch the changes and how they effect your image.  I used the hue clocks to help me adjust only the shadows on the Blue curve so that they are more neutral.

I am very glad you are watching this week and hope we can show you some interesting things to use CM for...

Greg

[ggroess]

Here's my attemt. Unfortunately my "pins" function in CM does not work.(Already written to Mike) I am not sure about the colour of the vessel, but used the white foam as a neutral and then the colour of the sky and of the grass appear to be within OK range.

Ganna I'd like to hear more about your Pins issue.  Is it related to PSE or PS?  I see by the version you have that you are using 3.0.20.  There have been some issues with Pins in that version. 

BTW the lightness appears to be a bit off in the image....
Greg