Highlighting the creative magic behind post-processed photos

Welcome to ABFriday’s monthly One Photo Focus! This month, 24 different photographers are sharing their post-processing interpretations of one “before” image submitted by Loré Dombaj of Snow’s Fissures and Fractures. Loré says “I took this picture on a beautiful Sunday morning, October 2006. I was visiting Salzburg and was just about to enter the lovely Mirabel gardens, a very beautiful place, when I spotted this cluster of tables in front of the cafe. The figure holding the plant captured my attention and I snapped it without much thought.  Can’t wait to see the results. 😀”

We begin with Loré’s “before” image, followed by the “afters,” and at the end, a gallery of all so you can watch the changes as you scroll through. Be sure to click the links to each participant’s blog as many have written posts “uncovering the magic” behind their “after” images. And if you would like to participate in April’s One Photo Focus and/or ABFriday in general, you’ll find all the details on the After-Before Friday Forum page. Come along and join this zany bunch – we’d love to have you!

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Submitted by Loré Dombaj — Snow’s Fissures and Fractures

Loré says: I knew there would be some great, crazy edits of my image, so I kept it simple. Few basic things, touch of color and a bit of Focal Soften. I was there and I remember how beautiful the day was, so I tried to bring it back from the corners of my memory.

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Submitted by Stacy Fischer — Visual Venturing

When I first saw Loré’s image, I was absolutely stumped. I fiddled around in Lightroom to no avail. I imported into Color Efex Pro, my trusty sidekick, to no avail. So I decided to embark on a totally different post-processing workflow. I thought I’d take this lovely scene and transform it into a terrace overlooking some kind of scenic landscape. And with that, I ventured into layering in Photoshop. Now, this is not something I’m very adept at, but thanks to Loré, I have some much needed practice under my belt!  For those who are wondering, the Salzburg cafe is now situated in Seattle 🙂

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Submitted by Michelle Lunato — Michelle Lunato Photography

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 Submitted by Lynne Ayers — Beyond the Brush Photography

Lynne says: I chose to focus on the face of the statue with the flowers as a secondary focus. I decided not to crop or use a vignette because I didn’t want to crowd the subject.

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 Submitted by Robin Kent — PhotographybyKent

Robin says: I am excited to be participating again in the One Photo Focus “Show and Tell” after missing Number 2 last month (I had a good excuse. Really!)  I must admit, however, that at first I was stumped by Loré’s image and it was only through a last-minute desperate act that I came up with something I liked.  Whether anyone else does is a separate question.

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Submitted by Janice Meyers Foreman — jmeyersforeman photography

Janice says: Over the last few months I have been following a couple of different blogs, photographers who are using phone cameras to take images and phone apps to process their images, typically referred to as iphonegraphy. I received the email with a link to the group challenge photo while visiting Chicxulub Mexico, there was no internet service at the apartment my parents had rented, so I decided to download the photo to my phone while sitting in a coffee shop. It was the perfect opportunity to try out a few of the apps I had been reading about and experimenting with.

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 Submitted by Katie Prior — Drawing with Light

Katie says: I really liked working with Loré’s image and it gave me a chance to try out a few new things.

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 Submitted by Cee Neuner — Cee’s Photography

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Submitted by Nic Anderson — Photography by Nic

Nic says: Once I saw the statue in the photo I knew I wanted to focus in on that and do something artsy with it.  I tried a few things, but in the end I liked the idea of making it look like it had been drawn and then shaded with greys.

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Submitted by Stacey/Lensaddiction — Learning to See Light

Stacey says: With thanks to Loré for a challenging image I eventually saw that the lovely stone bowl and statue overflowing with flowers and foliage was the key to this image.  What I then had to do was figure out how to get rid of all the “other” stuff around the edges. Details HERE.  

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Submitted by desleyjane — Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist

Desley Jane says:  I struggled a little with this one. I find the cherub’s face to be so sweet but a little hidden, so I tried to bring it out a little by vignetting the edges in the first two edits. I think the second edit with the closer landscape crop is my favourite, it seems to highlight the face. I also tried a square crop to focus on that cute face. Thanks to Stacy and Loré for this month’s challenge 🙂

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Submitted by Jaime Perez — My Photolanguage

Jaime says: This week I enjoyed a lot post processing Loré’s beautiful picture. I did much more than I’m used to, just because I didn’t find what to do. Anyway, necessity is mother of invention so, I hope ABFriday’s community likes this version, and I’m looking forward to see what others did.  

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Submitted by Sara Poyfair — Sara Poyfair Photography

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Submitted by Robyn — Captivate Me

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Submitted by Mary Hone — Tales from the Backroad

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Submitted by Nancy / dogear6 — Living the Seasons

Nancy says: As is my usual, I spent some time with Loré’s picture to evaluate what I saw and wanted to emphasize in it (thanks to Emilio for pointing out that’s how I do my pictures).  The face of the cherub caught my attention and I decided that’s what my focus would be.  I did some adjustments in Lightroom, then used the radial filters to lighten and darken specific areas.  I cloned out the sign that was partially hidden behind the tree and cropped the picture to a square. I took the picture into Photoshop and applied several different Topaz filters to it as well as a border from OnOne.  

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Submitted by Nancy Merrill — nancy merrill photography

Visit Nancy’s post for information about what she did to Loré’s image. 

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 Submitted by Amy — The World Is a Book

Amy says: For this one I explored the Efex and used the motion presetting.

First, I did some basic adjustments on the LR basic panel. Then, I moved the photo to the Efex Pro 2, clicked camera option and selected motion option. From there I played with the “zoom and rotate” a few times, clicked to apply these changes, and did a final re-touching — reducing the saturation and adding vignette, through LR. Voila! 

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Submitted by Marsha — Coolquilting

Marsha says: I noticed that there were lots of distractions in the background which could lead to endless editing grief. Luckily, I was really drawn to the face of the statue so the first edit I did was to do a severe crop to focus on the face(and thus eliminating any background distraction). I then took the cropped photo into Oggl and played with various combinations of lens and filters. I liked the effect with the Colaba pak……it gave a nice vintage look. My next step was with the app Scratchcam adding more filters, grain and scratches, to further age the photo. I liked it at this stage so I decided it was done. Please check out my blog post here: http://wp.me/pXgo5-1t4.

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Submitted by Benjamin Rowe — Aperture64

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Submitted by Max 510 — Max510’s Blog

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Submitted by Raewyn — decocraftsdigicrafts

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 Submitted by Emilio Pasquale — Photos by Emilio

Emilio says: When I first saw Loré’s photo, I was stumped. I couldn’t add clouds to it! Then it came to me that it looks like a photo that would be hanging in a pizzeria. So after considerable processing I’ve come up with a faded representation of the original image- as if the colors have been faded with time, and by the result of the sun shining upon it day after day!

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Submitted by Karen Chengelis — KCinAZ

Karen says :Thank you Loré Dombaj for sending us such a nice picture for One Photo Focus.  I attempted to change it to Black & White and then recolorize the flower pot plants but still don’t have enough knowledge in Lightroom to do that.  Probably should have brought it into Photoshop and done that there.  Mainly I cropped the photo so that the boy’s eyes were at the bottom third line level.  Then applied a few exposure changes plus white & black adjustments, added a beautiful sunlight 2 preset, and finally a vignette.

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 Please click on the links of those who contributed this week, to read about their post-processing steps and/or to see what other treasures they have on their blogs. They’d love to have you visit!

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