Week 6: Example 2 - Pagoda of the Five Concubines, Tainan

This is the forum for posting to the June 2010 CM 101 Class
leeharper_admin
Posts: 263
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2013 2:39 pm

Postby leeharper_admin » Wed Jul 21, 2010 1:34 pm

This is driving me nuts - I think I need some sage words... ::)

I kept this one back for 24-hours as well, and it's certainly better than it was yesterday - but I've started fiddling, and am probably aimlessly working this one to death, so I've slapped my wrists and I'm just going to upload it!

I tried the CurveMeister Man from Mars technique, Dan Margulis' Man from Mars technique, and contrast pinning - and I liked the result of rotating the contrast pins best.

In truth I've done so much to this image that the steps themselves are rather hazy. I think that I've been playing 'Mouse Trap' ;)

I'm going to work through the other four images, and then put them aside until tomorrow; then I'm going to try those exercises you emailed me (thanks so much :)). I've got some comments to send you about those exercises (I read through everything last night), but I want to give that my full concentration, so I'll get week 6 out of the way first...

Cheers,
Lee.
Attachments
wk6_ex2_lh-jpg
wk6_ex2_lh-jpg (999 Bytes) Viewed 5698 times

ggroess
Posts: 5342
Joined: Wed May 24, 2006 2:15 am
Contact:

Postby ggroess » Wed Jul 21, 2010 4:08 pm

Lee,
First of all it's not too bad overall...I could see some things I might look at changing but in order to do that I might have you start over fresh...you certainly know what does not work and can take those parts of the mouse trap out.  Try this approach.

1) Try a shadow highlight adjustment first.  If that does not satisfy try a background copy layer set to screen and adjust the opacity. 
2) After you have a bit better balance in the overall image see if the MFM move helps you find what you are looking for...Be aware that the greens go neon pretty fast but you can soften that through a mask of by adjusting the saturation of the B curve to keep the yellow in the leaves. 
3) for many people the Sky and the halos are the deal breaker...you might want to ignore them for this go around and think of a better way to tackle them in CS5.  I do not have CS5 but I hear that it has some better tools for the halos and fringes...
4) There is detail inside the pagoda...see if you can save any of it....

Greg


Return to “Curvemeister 101 June 2010”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests