Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Many Edits of Watered Grass

Should have posted this waaay earlier, 'cause now I've forgotten how I did it. XD Oh well, I'll make a few notes on what I do recall.
The photos are of a small patch of wheat grass near us, and the edits I did aimed toward a darker "movie poster" style of feel, though I can't really place where I've seen a movie poster of this hue specifically...

 Minor edit of the original (contrast, color, clarity).

 Increased contrast and vividity (I also used a foliage vibrancy plug-in, which is why it's so green).

I took the foliage vibrancy back off and increased the colors for this one, probably stuck it through a filter for sunsets, too, then took some of that color and changed it with another plug-in (Or I just used the Sunshine plug-in to do both effects...).

This is even more contrasted and the color brightness and vividity toned down to make a nice shade of forest green.

Added even more contrast and played with another plug-in (Probably "Tonal Contrast").
Notice the shine on the nearest leaf, it doesn't look like a realistic reflection that much. I'll be changing that in the next pics.

This one is much darker and spooky-ish, lol. However, the reflection still isn't quite right.

This is my last edit (besides my Cold one) and the reflection is much better. The darker hue and toned down color makes good focusing for the water droplets. I lightened this one up a bit compared to the last one which was too dark.

I hope you guys liked some fo them! Which where your favorites? Some of the peope who've seen themalready liked the first vivid ones best.

5 comments:

  1. Well, I think the end product is very nice! I really the tone of the final edit and the general feel of the photo. :) Very nice job.
    keep up the posts. ;)

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  2. I like the end and the first one...but what does the original look like?

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  3. Duuude!! These are awesome! I like the first and second to last one the best I would have to say.

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  4. Wow, you're like me - edit the same shot over and over and over... :-D

    No, I didn't use a tripod. I would definitely recommend it, but I don't have one, so I handheld. No other special settings -- just took five exposures, and the computer program did the putting together part. Photomatix is the program I used.

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  5. Okay, for HDR you usually want all the apertures to be exactly the same, so I set the camera on auto and snapped a photo. Then I took a shot that was 2 stops underexposed, and then a shot that was 1 stop underexposed, then one that was 1 stop overexposed, and one that was 2 stops overexposed. You don't want to change the aperture, just the shutter speed. You can do it with three photos -- just as long as it's an odd number more than one.

    Photomatix isn't free, but you can download the trial version for free. It never expires, but they do paste their logo over it.

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