Highlighting the creative magic behind post-processed photos
Welcome to ABFriday’s monthly One Photo Focus! This month, 236 photographers are sharing their post-processing interpretations of one “before” image submitted by Cee Neuner of Cee’s Photography! Yup, 236 photographers! How is that possible, you ask?? Well, have you taken a look at today’s calendar? A p R i L F o O l s 😂 But, really, we do have a wonderful turnout this month.
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, you’ll find all the details on the After-Before Friday Forum page.
Don’t forget to check out After-Before Friday, hosted by Benjamin Rowe on Aperture 64. There you can share the magic “after” of your own “before” image, every Friday except the first Friday of each month (when One Photo Focus runs)!
BEFORE PHOTO
Submitted by Cee Neuner — Cee’s Photography
Cee says: The original edit is how I first edited this photo for my blog (edits done in Color Efex Pro 4). The 2nd edit was for this challenge. I made all my edits (2nd photo) in Adobe Bridge.
Submitted by Stacy Fischer — Visual Venturing
Cee provided us with a wonderfully captured and composed image, filled with lots of detail in the RAW file. And I had a blast editing it. I do so love old barns, and this one with its profusion of flowers and the American flag and star in the corner just made me smile. And so I set off to play, beginning in Lightroom, and taking a few spins with filters from Analog Efex Pro and Color Efex Pro. But in the end, I decided to stick more to reality – I made some basic adjustments in Lightroom, sharpened in Photoshop, and applied contrast, vignette, and “glamour glow” filters from Color Efex Pro. Thanks, Cee, for providing some very much-needed zen time out on a country road. I can understand why this tableau beckoned you to push the shutter!
Submitted by Emilio Pasquale — Photos by Emilio
Submitted by Katie Prior — Drawing with Light
Submitted by Michelle Lunato — Michelle Lunato Photography
Submitted by Laura Macky — Laura Macky Photography
Submitted by Amy — The World Is a Book
Amy says: I used both Lightroom and Photo Perfect for this one.
Submitted by Raewyn — decocraftsdigicrafts
Submitted by Klara — Sliku svoju ljubim II
Submitted by Julie Powell — Julie Powell Photography
Submitted by Chris — sv-takeiteasy
Submitted by Joanne Ritchie — Coffee Fuels My Photography!
Submitted by Natalie — Middle Europe
Natalie says: My submission for this month is a bit quick and dirty but unfortunately I didn’t have much time and I still wanted to submit something as I haven’t for so long. So it’s just a fun one. I was playing around by increasing the colour saturation and suddenly the house, colourful skies and American flag reminded me of the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, so I used copy and paste to add in Dorothy and the tornado.
Submitted by Ashleigh Pienaar — Through the Viewfinder
Submitted by Yan Balczewski — From Hiding to Blogging
Submitted by Bren Ryan — RyanPhotography
Submitted by Marie — The Syllabub Sea
Submitted by George McCane — Photoman401
Submitted by Bryan — theonlyD800inthehameau
Submitted by Sherry Felix – Port4u
Sherry says: I edited Cee Neuner’s photo of a barn donated for the April One Photo Focus challenge. After some Lightroom tweaks I brought it into Photoshop. I used spot healing, content aware fill, and cloning to remove the modern electrical wires. Then I used on1 to add a subtle antiqued look. After that I added adjustment layers in Photoshop; such as, color inversions, overlays, brightening and darkening, colored gradient, and grayscale. I converted a copy of the image layer to outlines and inverted it which created white outlines on the flowers to give it a bit of extra punch. I changed the color of the roof and brushed in a patina, added some early morning mist, and my final added flourish is the weathervane (open source).
Submitted by Reinhold Staden — Reinhold Staden Photography
Reinhold says: I actually had no idea what to do with this image. Finally I decided to get a bit spooky on that one. I sent a second image with a screenshot of my PS workplace showing how many layers I used to create that one.
Submitted by David Croker – CADEPhotographic
David says: The image above was achieved through applying a number of my usual processes however, as a last-minute decision, I chose to add some grain and remove the slight blue colour cast in the distance (right hand side). I feel that these were probably the most successful processing elements of this image as it seems to add to the oldy-worldy feel that I wanted to get from the barn. See you again next month.
Submitted by Nita Davis — Artistic Composition
Nita says: My objective with this edit was to that enhance the rustic feel of the image.
Submitted by Maralee Park — Maralee Park Photography
Submitted by Sheila Z. — Offshoots12
Sheila says: I love Cee’s work so I had to do this one! The sky I used is my photo and the horse is stock. For a complete explanation of my creative process please see my post at http://wp.me/p3tiYp-gM.
Submitted by Linda James — Rainy Day Reflections
Submitted by Ed Lehming — Ed Lehming 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!
Visual Venturing 
Really enjoyed working on this picture, (thanks Cee!) and a great gallery of edits! Stacy I love the colours in your edit, great how you got the faded and colourful look at the same time, either that or my mind is playing tricks on me, maybe I’m still trying to work out your April Fools!! 😛 Am feeling a bit of an April Fool myself, I looked through the many (!) wonderfully creative posts on here and was so exhausted I forgot to leave my comment here, silly me! Oops! 😀
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Wow such an amazing turnout this month. Well done
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Stacy, you’ve managed to create a very serene, almost surreal, atmosphere with your choices in processing. The softness of the clouds is highlighted by the soft blur of the image and the almost pastel colors. Love it!
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Thanks, Emilio! Cee’s photo certainly provided the beautiful “bones” 🙂 Wish I had taken it!
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So many fabulous edits! I must apologize to Cee Neuner for my improper credit. I must have gotten my wires crossed.
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No worries, Nita! Thanks so much for participating 🙂 I went to your blog to leave a comment but didn’t see a post, but wanted to let you know I love the rustic feeling you gave the photo!
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Wow! What a great collection of edits! It may take me a bit but I need to see how each of these were done. So creative. O LOVE your dramatic clouds Stacy. Way fun edit.
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Thanks, Michelle! It was a wonderfully fun group of edits this month 🙂
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Indeed it was!
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236 entries. Cool fools joke, Stacy. I heard one here in Germany yesterday. All the red rings of lighthouses should be repainted to blue according to a new European law. It was in the regular news. May be a good idea for One Photo Focus! All submissions are great and very creative. Yours is special too. Like the processing and the lighting. Smiles. Reinhold
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You got me! I was like, Wow! that many submitters! Haha. Great turn out this month, very interesting. I like the addition of the various animals (cow, horse, etc.) 🙂
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Very nice pics !
I’m sorry Stacy, but I’m quite busy this period , not a great moment 😉
Hope for May
Ciao ciao
Max
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What a great selection this week. I like your processing – very moody with those clouds
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Nice selection and so relieved there were not 236! My initial thought was ‘how the hell are we going to get through that many?’ Another gullible one!
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I fell for it too…good to be April-fooled! Love all the edits.
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Love the contrasts between these edits. I am so pleased that I got involved with this as it amazes me everytime how ‘outside the box’ posters go with the original image. Maybe next time I will go out of my comfort zone. Thanks for the inspiration 🙂
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Such creative entries again this month. I really enjoy seeing everyone’s work. Thanks for putting this together every month. 🙂 Oh, I almost fell for the April Fool’s joke. I thought – Wow, how will I ever look at them all and how did she find time to even look at them all much less post them. And then I kept reading… LOL Have a good weekend.
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Awww Stacy thanks for your comments about my photo. It looks like people really enjoyed working on my photo this week. I really like your edits. I like the soft glow you enhanced. 😀 😀 Glad it gave you some zen time, I know you really need it right now. 😀
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OMG, I was thinking: What happened here in the last few months, Stacy went global!!! 😀
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LOL, Loré!! Apologies for my late reply – I’m just now starting to play catch-up with the last three months and can’t believe I missed replying to quite a few of the comments here 😦
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It worked on me too! It is great to see so many entries. I just love seeing such a huge variety of ideas and then wish I’d thought of them myself!
Marie
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I’ve gotta say this was one of the most fun images to work on! I can see how people loved it as well by all the edits. Really great! Seems you and I had a similar color palette! Well done Stacy. Off to look at all the images more closely……
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Whoopsie! I thought Cee’s edit was yours. Soo…..we didn’t have the same palette at all but I love your edit! I really enjoy that all these are so different from one another. Thanks again for handling all this. Hope your move is going well!
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A great turnout for this week. How exciting, Stacy! 🙂
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Yes it is 🙂 Thanks, Amy, for being part of it!
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so enjoyed this! all the entries are great. I fell for your April fools joke. I thought, how did she have the time to receive 236 emails? LOL. sometimes I am so gullible it’s embarrassing.
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Hahaha! Yay, it worked! Thanks for the giggles, Sheila 🙂 And thanks so much for joining in!
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