Improve a Boring Black and White Image -- Anik Gets a Makeover

I've been posting like crazy with results from the wonderful Cumberland photo shoot, and have recently put a few hours into learning some new techniques. I thought it might be interesting to drop back a moment to the Aylmer photo shoot, my first Crombie McNeill workshop with models from Barrett Palmer Models.

At that shoot was Anik, a small but rather sultry looking model with amazing eyes and lips. Her hair was the perfect length for certain poses and I got several very nice images of her, especially in the fountain.

But there was this one image of her that I envisioned as a panther, prowling in search of prey. The image suffered extremely poor color and lighting, so I rendered it in black and white. And although it's a nice looking image, it does not really grab me. Here's that first try ...


What I find weak about it is the lack of punch, the mediocre lighting on her face, and the fact that it does not remind me even a little bit of the panther I was seeking.

So with my recent foray into black and white artistic renderings, I thought I'd take another swing at this image. I started from the original working copy (identical to the above but in large size) and worked it over with many filters until I found the right start. Water color with fairly dark hair.

That was pretty cool, but the face lighting still sucked. Easy enough to fix, I rendered an omni light on her face and blended it back with soft light mode to isolate her face somewhat. Much better.

One last thing, there still was not enough contrast, and the texture was not really working. I played some more and found another filter ... water paper. This one actually adds the fiber texture and smearing of fine art paper. This really helps darken the eyes and now I'm seeing that panther!


This is about as good as it gets, and is one of the rare images that actually looks better on my TN panel, which has a much brighter presentation.

Another interesting thought, it would require very little effort to take this to the point where she looked like the Joker's wife from Dark Knight. That would be a darker rendering, almost like the first vampire slayer in the Buffy series. But an interesting thing to attempt someday.

Bottom line: the eyes are stunning ... and I find this image much more exciting to look at than the original.

Banned Again!

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I made exactly one post recently that might have generated a complaint. A fella, lets call him Knave with the last name Avoid, has a knack for posting really dumb ideas as information, backed by his trademark "I have shot thousands of images", which if course has both zilch and squat to do with an actual test.

Tests must be designed to isolate variables so that you actually test for something instead of everything. Testing without such controls makes it impossible to make any definitive statements or conclusions on any specific issues (in this case, Fuji's selective sledge-hammer noise reduction.)

I responded with a scathing retort as I was frankly tired of the constant bull shit and back-handed side-swipes that pass on that forum these days.

Sofa King?
Oui!
Todd did.

Say it fast over and over ... don't blame me if you laugh 'til you puke ...

Crombie McNeill Workshop with Barrett Palmer Models Mk II - Part 7 - Charlotte Made Over

The first image I processed of Charlotte from this shoot looked kind of nice. But of course I am now learning how to apply makeup so I thought I would see what could be changed without butchering her image. I have stunning images form the first shoot, but this shoot I did not get to work with her enough. Maybe the next time ...

Anyway, the before and after are very different, yet both beautiful ...



Edit: And how about this one? I used Topaz Adjust 3 to give it some more punch ... I tried for a bit of a tone mapped look, but that does not really come out. This is more like a slight move in the direction of Draganized ....

Crombie McNeill Workshop with Barrett Palmer Models Mk II - Part 6 - One for Sam

That image of Sam in front of the fire truck is quite beautiful, at least in my opinion. So of course that makes it the perfect image for an bit more high fashion experimentation. Not too much though, as I don't want it to be a cartoon.

Anyway, the before and after ...



Edit: My sister (who is *not* color blind as I am) commented that the lips are too dark. I had also suspected that, and in fact wanted to do the lips in matching color for the fire engine, so I figured out how to do that and the result looks far better to me ... *sigh* ... there are so many possible variations ...


Edit2: My neighbour, Rene -- an accomplished photographer himself -- suggested that I try this in black and white, sort of a Casablanca rendering is you will. You can kind of see what he is driving at here:


Certainly the expression is already there. Just needs the right lighting. So we start with the straight up black and white, which I convert using an adjustment layer (instead of calculations, which is not all that controllable.)


That's a beautiful image ... soft yet sculpted. I like it. But this is too easy ... Sam's face would look good with the most ham-fisted of processing, so let's see what we can do to move closer to the Casablanca look.


That's interesting ... I used the artistic filter called smudge stick, which of course removes some of the tonal control form the artist. This is pretty nice, with lots of interesting detail remaining yet a great deal of "punch" from the contrast.

Now ... how about a darker rendering? The water color filter (also under the artistic grouping) allows a lot of tonal control, and I like the shades that get close to fresco. Lots of texture here, unlike my earlier renderings using this filter.


I *really* like that one. It's giving me that film grain edgy feel while retaining lovely tone on the skin. The shadows are gone, but that's not a problem for this sort of rendering. In fact it adds a lot of punch.

My final experiment is the addition of a spot light treatment using the render -> lighting effects filter. Obviously the light comes from top left and in front, so I tune the spot light top left and let the shadows go almost dark. This actually requires the use of a layer and opacity, but that's par for the course with most of what we do in photoshop anyway.


Yeah ... now *that* looks like a movie poster. Wicked.

Crombie McNeill Workshop with Barrett Palmer Models Mk II - Part 5 - Nils and Betsy Again

Now that my hard drives are both happy, I got in the mood to experiment a bit with some of these images. I went back to the well -- that series behind the shed -- when I got so many excellent images with Nils and Betsy. That series is even better than I had thought, as I still have many excellent poses, even after this series.

Here, I decided that more images of the same type would probably not be worth processing. How many behind the shed images does one really need? So why not experiment a bit? A little Fresco here, some watercolor there, add some makeup, play with lighting. Anyway ... I did all of that tonight.

I started with a shot of Nils in front of the window. This one is reflecting that beautiful red barn across the street, so the window adds a dash of color.


That's a nice pose, but the image is a tad plain. So I spiced it with a water color / fresco treatment.


Not really sure about that ... but it looks kind of nice.

I then tried a shot of Betsy in front of the same window, but from further back. She struck one of those classic hip-toss "sexy" poses, so I thought this might stand on its own. I like it, but this sort of shot benefits a lot from an interaction, this seems to be missing something.


Anyway ... on with another shot of Betsy. This is a close shot that I really liked, but decided to try a little high fashion makeup.


I kind of like that result .. a little glow in the skin, slightly over the top eyes, and dark, dark lips. Pretty nice ...

Now for a couple of Nils with Betsy ... these two had some great interaction.


Again, some glow and makeup, and this time some lighting changes. A subtle spot on her face, spilling onto his helps guide the eye to their almost kiss. Nice ...

Similar shot here ... but more of a couple-hood pose ...

Energizer Bunny ... From HELL!

My computer issues keep on going ... and going ... and going ... and ....

OK, so I let the disk format run over night and this morning I started the cooy from my USB backup drive back onto my new images drive. 224GB takes rather a while to copy ... several hours in fact. I went downstairs and had a bit of lunch (Mennonite Chicken Soup ... mmmmm) then started watching Chocolat with Juliette Binoche (who was also incredible in The English Patient) and Johnny Depp ... the movie was lent to me by my friend after my birthday dinner and is one of her favorites.

I was enjoying it until it hung on the PS3. I didn't want to figure that out right away, so I went upstairs and checked the copy status. Half an hour left ... I puttered about until there ten minutes and then got the urge to finish Chocolat. Turned out to be easy to get by the hang, just back up a touch and then fast forward over the hang spot. Worked perfectly.

So I watched the whole movie, which I think is one of the best I've ever seen. It taps deep emotions, very hard to describe and I sure won't in public :-)

When I got back upstairs, I was met with blank screens and dead silence ... oh oh.

Sure enough, the power switch was unresponsive. I smelled the back of the machine (dogs smell each other, humans smell their power supplies) and caught a whiff of that acrid burnt board smell, so I ripped trucked on back to Over the Top once more. I obviously took the 1TB disk along and got my refund. I picked up a new OCZ 500W supply with modular cabling. This is not only easier to install, but also improves air circulation, something that helps a lot when running in a warm room (the machine was in the basement for the last 5 years at least.)

I got home and had the machine rebuilt in half an hour. It booted first time and I am in heaven. I am just running a disk compare between the new images folder and the backup using the venerable WINDIFF. So far no differences ... but this looks to be another multi-hour task ... *sigh* ...

Anyway ... all is well that ends well. Assuming of course that this is the end of the computer problems for now ...

Edit: And that's it. WINDIFF reports identical file sets (and it checked them at the binary level) so I am switching back to live mode with a 500GB images drive. The only question remaining is whether Carbonite will be utterly confused by the new disk. I hope not.