ABFriday Week 43: April One Photo Focus

Posted on by Stacy P. Fischer

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 Cee Neuner of Cee’s Photography. Opening each was like building an Easter Basket one goodie at a time (and there are some images here definitely in keeping with this season!).

We begin with Cee’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 May’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 us – the more, the merrier!

Cee Neuner April One Photo Focus

Submitted by Cee Neuner — Cee’s Photography

Cee Neuner, Cee's Photography

Cee says: When I took this photo, I just thought it would be cool for my Odd Ball Challenge.  The tree making a little arbor over the walkway to the house I thought was unique.  So I really didn’t have anything super in mind regarding editing it.  I did decide I wanted to add more color.  I felt it needed a punch of something.  I know red is the brightest contrast to green, but I didn’t want to use red.  Then I thought I have always liked blue and green together.  So I chose to use some bluish-greens to add a little color to this photo.  I turned the roof brown and did a little cropping as well.  I hope you like what I did. I am looking forward to seeing what everyone does!

Submitted by Stacy Fischer — Visual Venturing

Front Porch, edited by Stacy P. Fischer

I love wrought iron. So when I saw Cee’s image, I knew I wanted to focus on the chairs, railing, and window decoration. How I processed the photo, however, was a convoluted journey between programs and countless adjustments!  I began in Lightroom, then moved into the Google Nik Efex suite, using Sharpener, Viveza, and Color Efex Pro. Back in Lightroom, I then applied countless selective adjustments to bring clarity, brightness, and focus to the iron elements and reduce it in the rest of the image. I also used the spot removal tool to clean up the fence, the iron watchamacallit by the front steps, and some spots in the cement wall.  When I was finally finished, I knew there was no way I could put together a cohesive video, so this week I’m just posting the final image.

Cee, I have to admit I voted for your barn image for this month, but I think I ended up having way more fun with this one — thanks for a great challenge!

Submitted by Robin Kent — PhotographybyKent

Robin Kent, PhotographybyKent

Robin says: This is the week that everyone gets to perform surgery on the same image, but because we have surgeons with different specialties (e.g., neuro, thoracic, ophthalmological, maxillofacial, etc..) the results are likely to vary. Given we are just a couple days past my favorite day of the year, I decided to follow a slightly different path this time.  For details, check my post here.  Warning, a pop quiz may be involved, but if so,  it will be voluntary.

 Submitted by Laura Macky — Laura Macky Photography

Laura Macky, Laura Macky Photography

 Submitted by Katie Prior — Drawing with Light

Katie Prior, Drawing with LightKatie says: Cee has given us with a really nice image of a porch set out for a relaxing afternoon with chairs on the front. I find this image very charming and I could envisage it as an old photo from the early days of colour family snaps. I wanted to warm up the picture and then try to age it a little by playing with filters and textures.

 Submitted by Michelle Lunato — Michelle Lunato Photography

Michelle Lunato, Michelle Lunato Photography

Michelle says: To edit Cee’s picture, I wanted to do something fun and extreme. I played around with several edits, but finally decided on this one…

Submitted by Nic Anderson — Photography by Nic

Nic Anderson, Photography by Nic
Nic says: Ok, I’m thinking that once you see what I have done you will all think I’ve lost my mind.  Especially since it is April not October.  But I have to say that the greenery was just asking to be made into a monster with glowing eyes!  Plus Halloween is my favorite holiday, so there’s that.

 Submitted by Klara — Sliku svoju ljubim II

Klara, Sliku svoju ljubim II

Klara says: I started editing in LR enhancing the contrast, clarity, blacks and whites, vibrance. I continued in Color Efex Pro 4, adding 4 filters (brillance/warmth, classical soft focus, cross processing and vignette lens.)

 Submitted by Julie Powell — Photographic Jewells

Julie Powell, Photographic Jewells

 Submitted by Karen Chengelis — KCinAZ

Karen Chengelis, KCinAZ
Karen says: Cee Neuner gave me a huge challenge on how to approach the image.  I liked it a lot already in full color but since I’ve been wanting to do something with B&W, I decided to give it a try with this one.  As usual, I was still second guessing myself as I sent the image to Stacy at Visual Venturing for April’s One Photo Focus.  I started with Cee’s raw image in Lightroom to begin my editing.  First the image was converted to B&W and then a temperature adjustment of Creamtone along with playing around with the basics until I was happy.  Definition of happy is that I didn’t start over.  Then into Photoshop where some coloring was done.  A yellow cast with a low opacity was added to the windows.  Then the grass and vegetation was colorized with a low opacity green. Then I noticed what might be a wreath on the door and colorized it as well with standard green and red. I purposely left the main tree alone.  Go figure?  Well, there you have it.  Thanks, Cee, for such a great image and for helping me step outside the box. To read more detail visit KCinAZ.

Submitted by Marsha Leith — CoolQuilting

Marsha Leith, CoolQuilting

Marsha says: Playing with a new app “Etchings” for this photograph re-do.

 Submitted by Sabina — Victim To Charm

Sabina, Victim To Charm

Sabina says: No post for me this time, but here’s a bit about my thought process. When I first saw Cee’s photo, I immediately knew what I wanted to do to it. I went into Photoshop and started by cropping to include just the tree and the door underneath, as if stumbling upon a witch’s house in a forest. I added a bit of a sepia filter, used selective color to make the greens much more magenta, and “burned” the whole image to give it the shadowy, ominous feeling I was going for. 

Submitted by Raewyn — decocraftsdigicrafts

Raewyn, decocraftsdigicrafts

 Submitted by Anne-Cécile — UnClicUnePhoto

Anne-Cécile, UnClicUnePhoto

Submitted by Helen Chen — HHC Blog

Helen Chen, HHC Blog

Helen says: Since I had “played” so much with this photo, I couldn’t remember all the things I have done. I cropped and straightened the horizontal line. When I played with color, I was surprise to see the decoration (a little red spot) on the wreath. I used PhotoShop Element.

Submitted by Lynne Ayers — Beyond the Brush Photography

Lynne Ayers, Beyond the Brush Photography
Lynne says:  Biggest decision was deciding what to focus on in the image and I decided for the porch. 

Submitted by Mary Hone — Tales from the Backroad

Mary Hone, Tales from the Backroad

Submitted by Jaime Perez — My Photolanguage

Jaime Perez, My Photolanguage
Jaime says: This time, I find this beautiful image, from Cee Neuner, totally out of focus; so, with not much to do about it, I decided to give the photo a more dramatic appearance. I used some color desaturation and filter effects, in Ps Cs3, to make the image look like old and damaged by the passage of time.

Submitted by Nancy / dogear6— Living the Seasons

Nancy / dogear6, Living the Seasons

In my defense, this is all Stacy and Laura’s fault. If Laura Macky hadn’t added that moon back in February, which made Stacy reposition March’s cherub into Seattle, I probably wouldn’t have decided to try compositing on this photograph! 
It was hard getting away from how plain and rather ugly this house was. But that tree was so fascinating – kind of like the Wizard of Oz, where the movie starts in black and white, and when Dorothy hits her head and starts her adventure, it all goes to beautiful technicolor. That’s what this reminded me of – what WAS behind that door. Curious minds wanted to know or better yet, invent a new world.
To that end, I experimented repeatedly and my blog post will be full of bloopers. My skill set for masking, layers, and composites was minimal, which didn’t help. I found a great course on lynda.com by Julieanne Kost called, “Introduction to Photo Compositing”. It helped me tremendously and I played it a number of times as I worked with this. 
I created masks for the doorway and windows, then using free transform, worked in an image from Colonial Williamsburg that showed a house with the long path leading up to it. I only had that one photo with the blue sky, so I used it for the door and both windows, adjusting with free transform to change the appearance of the trees and clouds. This kept the coloring the same for the sky and trees, which were brilliantly colored that day. 
I did some minor cloning on the front steps, adjusted brightness, and added a frame from onOne. It sounds so easy, but it took me a good amount of time to get something that I liked. To see everything that didn’t work, check out my blog at http://livingtheseasons.com/2015/04/03/ab-friday-week-43/. 
Thanks Cee for a great challenge and for helping me accomplish my goal to better learn how to use layers and masks!

Submitted by Nancy Merrill – nancy merrill photography

Nancy Merrill, nancy merrill photography

Submitted by Max 510 — Max510’s Blog

Max 510, Max510's Blog

 Submitted by Loré Dombaj — Snow’s Fissures and Fractures

Loré Dombaj, Snow's Fissures and Fractures

Loré says: Let me tell you, I am in love with Cee’s image. It has an exceptional composition, I see a story in the background. I knew I wouldn’t do much here, just a little bit of cropping on top and bottom, to set it more nicely. But I wanted to make it my own, so I played with colors. Once I got this combo of lavender and beige, I was doubly in love. I softened the image to give it a dream-like quality and that was it. But, I couldn’t stop playing with this image and you can see what I did next in my post.

Submitted by Benjamin Rowe — Aperture64

Benjamin Rowe, Aperture64
Ben says: I have hidden eggs in the picture especially for easter, Hope everyone enjoys a digital easter egg hunt.  

Submitted by Janice Meyers Foreman — jmeyersforeman photography

Janice Meyers Foreman, jmeyersforeman photography

 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!

So what do you think of the ABFriday forum?

Feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section. And don’t forget to view the guidelines if you want to participate. I’d love to have you onboard!

75 thoughts on “ABFriday Week 43: April One Photo Focus”

  4. Pingback: One Photo Focus Challenge | HHC Blog

  5. Yes English is my first language. Sheesh! I just saw what I wrote on my iPhone earlier. I meant to say that I like your crop better. And now that I have a keyboard….I love your edit Stacy. 🙂

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  9. Pingback: ABFriday-One Photo Focus: Week 42 | Cee's Photography

  10. Wow, Stacy (& Cee) – I am amazed at the imaginations that ran wild with this photo. What a bunch of creatives! I found this picture really hard for envisioning a change, yet every edit makes sense to me (now).

    Stacy – I totally sympathize that you weren’t able to record how you did it this month. I had the same problem, plus I floundered around so much that no one would follow it anyhow. By the time I got to the final try, I had it down quite a bit more, but I still have to play with it more to be sure I can remember it. Plus the next morning, my husband showed me some other ways to do the masking that would have been much faster. Still, it’s always fun to learn new skills.

    Thanks for another great month of fun with this!

    Nancy

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    • Nancy, I can’t wait to read your post! I was so amazed by what you did 🙂 And thanks for understanding about the video. I was actually going to put together a slideshow of some of the intermittent changes, but my Lightroom history was two steps forward/three steps back, that even THAT wouldn’t have made any sense!

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  11. Pingback: ABFriday – One photo Focus – Cee’s Photo | decocraftsdigicrafts

  13. This is turning into quite an enterprise, I counted 25 entries! Can that be right? Very impressive efforts by everyone. I really liked the soft dreamy effect you achieved. If this rate of participation continues you may need to hire an assistant or two.

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  14. Another interesting selection. I notice this time there are some similarities in people’s approach and a number of us chose a nostalgic approach, and yet, even with that, they are all different. Thanks for putting it together Stacy.

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    • Thank you, Amy, for being an ongoing supporter of ABF! I have so much fun opening up the emails with the submissions. The line from “Forrest Gump” always runs through my head – “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” 😀

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    • Thanks, Mary! I just pushed and pulled sliders and effects globally until I found something I liked, and then worked selectively to make portions stand out. I really had a great deal of fun with this one 😀

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  17. Pingback: Photo Editing: One Photo Focus: The Porch | Beyond the Brush

  18. Stacy, your edit is so dreamy looking makes me want to live in that house. Your worked with the my not so focused shot too. The chairs are interesting. I never thought of grabbing a photo of the chairs. I was just so excited to see the arbor for odd balls. I had driven past this house a thousand times and never noticed it before. 🙂

    I really like all the edits from everyone. Some were quite creative too!!! Thanks so much for letting me take part and have everyone use my photo this month. It was fun and I’m sure today will be extremely fun going through everyone’s post.

    I just bought the Nik Software package, so now I can play around easier, since I’m not a photoshop expert.

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    • Thanks, Cee, for liking what I chose to do to your photo 🙂 Like I said, I love wrought iron, so it made it easier for me to choose a focus for the image. I hope you and Chris enjoyed viewing all the images on your Apple TV 🙂 And the Nik software is really much more intuitive to use than Photoshop. I know you’ll have a lot of fun with it!

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  20. Hi Stacy, it would appear that the One Photo Focus is growing! lots of great edits, and no two the same… love it. Your final image is wonderful and dreamy. I like the tight crop. Great work.

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  21. Pingback: After-Before Friday; Cee’s Garden Gate | jmeyersforeman photography

  22. Funny how I like your crop. I think I might like you’re better. I love viewing everyone’s interpretations. I’ll check them out ore closely when I return. Being on the iPhone is too hard for these old eyes o.o

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  24. Well Stacy that is a great crop of edits the forum has put forward. I love the softness you added to your version and as with some others the close crop works really well making the tree frame the image more.

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    • Thanks, Ben. I’ve really learned from past ABFriday’s that the crop can be an invaluable friend in 1PF :). Now, I just read your comment on Robin’s post (after I had written mine – seems a few of us were posting at the same time there!) You, stumped? You must go and read what I said 😉

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