Dadashi_Hatake

Now, just two days ago I was at a fair/homecoming thing and they had a parade, I took some pics, they were ehh do to lighting and white balance settings, easily fixable in digital programs. One problem was ALL THE PEOPLE AND CARS. They had a parade with classic cars and trucks, and some people got in the shots and made them look chaotic, so, you'll see a before and after of this pic, and I'd like some input. One member on here (DonaldG) commented on my last topic and told me to try removing some of the distractions from my pictures via clone stamp and etc. So, I did just that and added some unique touches to this pic, and I'd really like his input on it. So, DonaldG and folks of the forum, what do ya think? >.>

Before: (blurred the faces and cropped)


After:

WereBo

Excellent job of removing the various people, the only part that gives it away is where you removed the shadows by the rear-wheel and I'd have cleaned up the dirt patches on the road, too.

The colours are too faded - Either leaving the original colours or converting to B & W (for the 'retro' effect) would look better.

(It's a lovely old pickup truck )

Dadashi_Hatake

Thanks for the honest feedback. Can't better my skills if I'm not sure where I went wrong. *bows* Well, perhaps next time it'll be better. Back to the drawing board! lol.

P.S: The reason I went for the effect I did, the b&w to color, was this picture I saw an example of from Paint.NET, they use it quite a bit to show what their software can do. It's a blue muscle car, not sure what type (I don't remember) but they did a similar effect, probably just pulled it off better than I did lol.

Edit:

http://www.getpaint.net/screenshots/..._car_thumb.jpg

link to the picture I was talking about T-T I see that I messed up now, and they even left the people in their pic. Were my hours of work all for not!?~ *falls to knees broken* *sniffle sniffle* Perhaps I should have stayed with just toning it down a bit and leaving the other stuff in it...

WereBo

I think the reason the colour-fade works in their picture, is that it tones in with the perspective of the car being at an angle - You photo, being straight-on, it looks odd.

Looking again at your original photo, it would look really effective if you faded the colour from where the right-hand side road is, just behind the cab in the photo, and blend the B&W horizontally upwards, so the colour fades into the distance, but leaving the truck in it's original vibrant orange.

Also, I think your picture looks better without the people in the background, they make it look more of a snapshot than a composed photo. In your example photo with the blue car, there's only 3 people at the back, and they blend into the background.

All in all, you did an excellent job with the cloning tool, it's only in that bottom-left corner can you see any evidence of your work, with the repeating pixel-patterns. I often repair old/damaged photos for folks and one of the tricks I learnt, was to vary the position of where you're cloning from, every few strokes - That way, you get less of a repeating pattern developing.

Don't feel down about it, just look at what you've learnt about photo editing

DonaldG

Well Done Dadashi

Not one second was wasted. Practising advanced techniques does take time - the more practise and mistakes one makes, the greater the skill acquired.

My only comment on the photo is the very tight cropping to the top of the truck. That may be because that is the top of the image anyway or something needed removing.

The cloning or removal of the traffic & people is a skill that is very important skill to learn - looks like you are there!

The next challenge is to turn the truck a pale blue and place it in a field or beach scene

Dadashi_Hatake

Thanks for the comments and tips. I do love editing photos, even if I'm not that good yet xD Just a really fun thing to do. This was the hardest one I've tried to do. I think I'm going to start over with this image sometime, crop it better, DON'T pull a funky gradient color change thing, clone out the people and shadows better (hopefully) and hmm... I think I'll just clone everything out and leave an "empty" starting image to toy around with.

And, Donald, at your comment about what's next, heh... I sorta tried that, you'll see what I started below.

My mistakes:

Cropping the image to close at the start and being too dumb and lazy to fix it. (Stupidity...)

Getting lazy/messing up on some parts of the cloned areas and making a noticeable pattern in the cloned pixels.

Coloring the image with the gradients before cloning, effectively cornering myself with that color scheme (Ugh, stupidity again.)

I guess I'm still new, still learning, and a little too eager to succeed lol.

Last thing. A user on another site said that I should have selected the truck itself, and placed in in a totally different picture for a background. I attempted that, and they said the render I made of the truck was bad lol, always some problem.



Any more info one what I did wrong here? The user on the other site basically left me hanging when I asked for exactly what I did wrong, r how I could fix it lol. Not sure if I cut it to close at some parts, and then didn't in others, not sure, but that's what I suspected. Like not killing the shadow under the truck, and getting to close and having a rough look at the some other parts.

DonaldG

At the mo, I do not have much time...

The important thing is:
* You are practicing... every time you try something and it does not work - You have learnt what not to do. It is just as important as learning what to do.

Don't be afraid to have a go at a technique or experiment and mess it up - as long as you are practising with a copy of the original and not the original itself.

(it is said that it took 2000 failures before the success if making a filament light bulb - on the contrary, said the inventor, I learnt 2000 ways of how not to make one!) We learn from our mistakes.

Which software are you using?

There are several ways of 'cutting' out an image. It must be cut out with a transparent background - I use Photoshop and convert the image to a 'layer' and cut out using either an 'eraser' or a mask and 'paint' out the background. Alternatively an advanced technique would be to use the Pen tool but that is not a subject to be covered here!

When cutting out, magnify the image on screen by 200 - 300%. That will make the cutting out more accurate and easier to place the tool. If the software permits, use a very slightly soft edge with the tool - in Photoshop, I use about 95 - 98% hardness, depending on the subject.

Dadashi_Hatake

I use Paint.NET mostly, but I have a few freeware programs that have some similar features to Photoshop. I have GIMP, Inkscape, Photoscape, GimPhoto, etc... List goes on >.> Can't buy the expensive things, get all the free stuff you can find lol.

And I used the magic wand selection tool for some of the stuff; like a big area of white. Click it with the wand, and all that is selected, then you can just click cut and its gone. Then I go back over with the eraser. In Paint.NET, when you start erasing the picture, it removes it and leaves a transparent area there, so, when you're done, you can just save it to .png and have the image on a transparent background.

I've also used the lasso selection tool, where you select what you want kept, then invert the selection and delete everything around it.

I don't think Pain.NET has a softness/hardness option thing, might be where you select the eraser then go to the color options and turn down the opacity to lower- near transparent levels, not sure... But I think GIMP has a brush softness thing. Is the soft edge where it leaves some semi-transparent pixels near the edge of its range?

DonaldG

OK - here are 4 composites that I have just done.

(Normally we should post images no larger that 800px wide if possible - I hereby give me permition to bend that rule )

The way I 'cut' the truck out was by using a mask, then painted black where I wanted the transparency. The use of a mask is non destructive. If you make a mistake and convert part of the image you want to keep. all you have to do is paint over with white and that part of the image is restored.

If you PM me with your email address, I will send you a '.tif' version that is cut out that way so that you can experiment with placing it on different backgrounds.


Looking for somewhere to park!

This would look more realistic if the outline edges of the truck were softened down with a smidgen of gausian blur... just round the outline only




Who has right of way? Bloomin' Sunday drivers!
Truck colours are too bright - but is demonstrates a colour shift




He is going too fast - I hope his brakes work!
I gave the truck a forwards distortion and a gnats whisker of motion blur.




Serves him right. Brakes failed - with a colour sense like that, it is the best place for it!
Note that on the upside-down truck, the shadow round the wheels and along the underbody needed removing.

WereBo

On the 1st composite, outside the old wall, you'll also need to add some shadow under the truck. If you look at the shadow-direction from the tree, at the left side, you can see it's near midday so the shadows need to be painted in accordingly.

DonaldG

Fussy!

WereBo

It's the little details that makes a picture convincing

Seriously though, I've noticed quite a few pictures (newspapers, magazines etc.) that, at first glance, look OK, but there's something niggling about them that is wrong.

There was a famous case, during the Iraq invasion, about several Reuters pics that were so obviously photoshopped, they were worse than amateur - Cloned smoke clouds from bombings, the same people in several different towns simultaneously and so on

DonaldG

In reality - my efforts were not to be absolutely convincing (honest!) but more on the side of cutting out, colour shifting & placement on a different background.

At the moment I have a huge workload & don't have much time to play..

Done_Fishin

Thanks for the seminar .. all very interesting ..

zuluclayman

here's my pic

DonaldG

Nice One - I like the way it is parked with the sun shining on the cab

Looks like a gum tree or two.

zuluclayman

yep - my sister's place just inland from Bateman's bay NSW south coast

DonaldG

Two more variations:

WereBo

Now THAT is some crazy paint-job! I like the way the patterning appears contoured to the trucks curves

zuluclayman

patterning works well for green one - not so sure about grey one - did you use displacement maps?