Southern Mansion-colored and edited to print-Comments

[ALB68]

This old southern mansion was and still may be in Greensboro, Al. The photo is remarkable considering it was made in 1939. The house, amazingly, was built in 1831. Give me your comments please.

Before: Source Library of Congress-public domain

 

[Inkz]

You my friend are punching out some very nice work mate...

Great colourization (<< Im UK lool)

Looks like it was build yesterday lol, so great job.

On the right side just above the bush is looking a little funky. Other than that, it's a happy picture.

 

[ALB68]

Thank you sir. I consider that to be a high compliment coming from you especially.
Oh, and by the way Inkz, I used your Texture 4 on the chimneys.

You my friend are punching out some very nice work mate...

Great colourization (<< Im UK lool)

Looks like it was build yesterday lol, so great job.

On the right side just above the bush is looking a little funky. Other than that, it's a happy picture.

 

[ibclare]

Good stuff ALB. I have a couple suggestions. Maybe try a different blend mode on the windows. They seem to pop out a little too much. Sort of the same thing on the white bldg. It's a tad glaring. And the shrub on the left could use the addition of another color or two to give it a little more depth. It's kind of pale especially on the top right. Overall, like Inkz said, looks like it was just built!

 

[Tom Mann]

Great start, ALB, but unless your intent was to produce a version with that much contrast and saturation, I would tone it down considerably. Also, introducing a tiny bit of camera / lens flaws like veiling glare, film halation, etc. can strongly help the impression of reality, even if the effect is tiny. I would also warm up the whites a bit (to look like a sunny day), put a gradient in the sky and make the greens of the vegetation more yellow-green.

Starting with your very nice version, a few more minutes got me to this. There still are obvious flaws, eg, the sky still looks fake, I probably overdid the lens flare, the shutters need a lot more work, there is a patch of white paint that I missed, etc. but hopefully this is in a direction most people would like.

Cheers,

T

 

[ALB68]

I like yours Tom, I also like the color pop I did. (LAB correction then back to RGB). I printed mine and it is very eye catching.

 

[ALB68]

I didn't do a thing to the windows, they are "as shot". I tried to work from the idea that the light source was at the front right, subsequently the shadows would increase on the left side, my semi-final was darker in the shadowed areas, but I decided it didn't look right, so I used the dodge tool to lighten them up. Might be a bit too much. Notice that Tom's version has the whites brighter than mine. Thanks for the input.

Good stuff ALB. I have a couple suggestions. Maybe try a different blend mode on the windows. They seem to pop out a little too much. Sort of the same thing on the white bldg. It's a tad glaring. And the shrub on the left could use the addition of another color or two to give it a little more depth. It's kind of pale especially on the top right. Overall, like Inkz said, looks like it was just built!

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi ALB -

Please don't take this post the wrong wrong way. Believe it or not, I'm truly trying to help you develop your Photoshop skills, and that starts with making sure that you have the ability to see glaringly obvious problems.

Let's start by looking at the histograms of saturation values for a few conventional photos of similar subject matter.

 

[Tom Mann]

Note that even though the histograms are high resolution, they all show nice broad distributions of saturation values between 0% saturation and 100% saturation, with no sharp peaks at particular values of saturation.

Next, lets look at the same plot for my tweaked version of your re-coloration. As you can see, it exhibits the same property as the histograms for the conventional photos.
.

 

[Tom Mann]

Next, lets look at the same plot for your recoloration (before my tweaks).

 

[Tom Mann]

Any image with a histogram as bad as that will appear wildly artificial -- it's so over-the-top, it almost hurts my eyes to look at it.

What concerns me is that, as has happened numerous times in the past, you didn't catch this problem yourself, and, even worse, after the fact, state that you like the look.

It's absolutely fine if you like the look and that is what you set out to achieve. However, if you don't have among your set of skills the ability to recognize that your image is about 5 standard deviations away from a normal photo in saturation properties, something is seriously wrong.

I've thought about it and the only possibilities I can come up with are:

a) You are using a monitor that is either absolutely terrible, or is on its last legs and shows you a low contrast undersaturated view of your images. I initially thought this couldn't be the case because you apparently purchased a hardware calibrator, but I starting to think that you may not have the hardware calibrator installed properly;

b) You edit your images in a very bright environment, and this causes you to crank everything up to "11";

c) You are trying to develop a "style";

d) You don't have enough experience looking at conventional, well-executed photos;

e) You have a vision problem.

• I really hope the problem is either (a) or (b). Either of these would completely explain you putting out a series of images that are wildly too contrasty and with extremes of saturation and be completely unaware of it. Fortunately, these two problems are the easiest things to fix.
• (c) is fine, but you really need to develop the ability to produce realistic colorations because most people want that.
• I can't believe it's (d). There are just too many nice photos on the web for it to be this. If you feel this might be the case, when you are working on a coloration, just keep a few, high quality conventional photos open, and switch back and forth. This will give your eyes a visual reference point.
• I *truly* hope it isn't (e).

Again, I hope I haven't overstepped my place and offended you by speaking so directly, but I feel that someone has to point out the lack of reality in your images.

With the best of intentions,

Tom

PS - If you are looking for techniques to make your images look more realistic, Clare has numerous times described techniques to accomplish this. Listen to her. She has good advice.

 

[ALB68]

Tom,
Here is the histogram from my computer. I sending you a PM. I reckon you can jump on this too and tell me the err in my ways.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi ALB - The histograms you posted show the distribution of R, G, and B values in your image. This is not the same as a histogram of saturation values, ie, the graphs that I posted. RGB histograms are obviously very useful and can allow one to diagnose many problems, including glaring ones like clipped channels. However, RGB histograms simply can not show problems such as the wildly unrealistic distribution of saturation values in this image.

The reason I brought in saturation histograms was because this method of looking at the data doesn't depend on either of our monitors, doesn't depend on the viewing conditions for either person, doesn't depend on monitor calibration and profiling, possible vision problems, etc. A simple push-button analysis using a commercial plugin that shows (roughly) half the pixels have zero saturation, a quarter have 100% saturation, and the remaining quarter have a few discrete values of saturation is absolutely indisputable. One simply NEVER sees such a distribution of saturation values in nature - it's more like what one would find in a quickly drawn cartoon strip.

Perhaps even more to the point, the saturation histograms don't depend on the artistic training, sensibilities, courtesy (or lack thereof) of the people commenting on this image. A person who doesn't have extensive experience with images might not be able to put their finger on why this image is "different" from most others they see, and might even prefer it to a more realistic version, but that is very different from an aspiring photoshop artist who doesn't seem to be able to recognize such problems and hence, almost certainly can't produce either version, on demand / as they desire.

My hope was that this analysis would convince you to continue the wonderful progress you have been making at turning out great images. The extra effort required to take it the final bit isn't that great -- the total time I spend tweaking your image to produce the version with a nice saturation histogram was probably no more than ten minutes, and you already have all the tools to do so.

The best of luck,

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

PS - In case you are interested, the plugin that I used to generate the saturation histogram is a freebie called, "Wide Histogram", from Reindeer Graphics. It's one of my oldest, but most useful for these sorts of analyses.

I just checked and it looks like Reindeer Graphics no longer distributes it (or an updated version) for free, but the old (circa 2003) free version can still be found at places like: http://www.graphics.com/modules.php...downloaddetails&lid=600&ttitle=Wide_Histogram

In contrast to a lot of old plugins, this one continues to work fine even with the most modern version of PS (CS6), and works with both 8 bpc and 16 bpc images.

HTH,

T

 

[ALB68]

Just another testament to my inexperience and inability to produce to acceptable standards. Do not have wide histogram, all I have is the PS histogram.