Weekend Fun for Duck et al

I took a couple of shots today at a flea market that I'm sharing here
for anyone who would like to try their hand at post-processing.

My daughter grows succulents and plants them in various interesting
containers. I saw the succulent in the shoe and snapped it for her.

2013-07-06-10 .dng Process it any way you want. Use plug-ins or
whatever. No rules.

There are some rules for the man, though. I'm giving a class next
week on the use of Elements for some people in my camera club that
don't presently use Elements. I've got 10 images with which I will
show them how to do various things using Elements. One of them is a
conversion to black-and-white.

So, for 2013-07-06-11 .dng, you *can't* use Nik or Topaz...only
Photoshop or Elements or whatever editing program you use without
plug-ins.

Technique and crop for both is all up to you with the stated exception
for #11.

My .jpgs are in the folder.

If you can't open a .dng, I'll add .psds or unadjusted .jpgs.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qm12l753mgjclqa/acBbikZCy8

 

OK! Here is 2013-07-11. All processing of the DNG, including crop,
adjustments, and B&W conversion was done entirely in LR4 "Develop
Module" without the aid of plug-ins, or LR presets.
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/2013-07-06-11-1ew.jpg >

Here is a screen shot of my LR4 workspace showing the B&W conversion
settings I used.
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/screenshot_251.jpg >

Now to get to work on 2013-07-10.

 

....and here are three renditions of 2013-07-10: DNG RAW processing &
crop was done in LR4. Then into CS6 to apply
"Field Blur" to the background. Then NIK Define 2 for NR, Color Efex
Pro 4 for a bunch of different stuff for each rendition, and Viveza for
some final tweaks.
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/2013-07-06-10Aw.jpg >
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/2013-07-06-10Bw.jpg >
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/2013-07-06-10Cw.jpg >

 

....and here is a slightly different LR4 treatment.
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/2013-07-06-11-3ew.jpg >

 

This is the better one to me. Better than mine. I didn't get in the
hat or clothing, and it does add to the image.

I didn't think of Lightroom when I said only Photoshop or Elements,
but have no objections provided that pre-sets aren't use.

The group I will be presenting to, though, don't have any Adobe
program or have Elements only but haven't used any of the features.

While I use CS6, this preparation has pushed me into using Elements
(9.0) to process images. Other than the need to fiddle around and
figure out where certain commands are in the drop-downs, I seem to be
able to process in Elements exactly as I would in CS6.

The Curves feature is more limited (but 9.0 does have Curves), and I
can't change to Lab Color and sharpen in the A and B channels, but I
haven't come across any missing feature that I work with personally in
CS6 that is not present in Elements.

 

Well I discovered a few for starters.
1. PSE's version of ACR (for PSE-9 anyway) is missing a whole bunch of stuff.
2. You can only use layers and most of the features in PSE in 8-bit
mode, so the processed RAW file has to be converted to 8-Bit before you
can get to work.

After ACR processing and conversion, I made this rendition using the
"Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer and multiple passes with the
"brightness/Contrast" adjustment layer. For each pass I inverted the
layer mask to "black" and painted in where I wanted the adjustment with
a white brush, tweaking the adjustment once I had the area I wanted
fixed painted.
I used nothing else in PSE other than an 8x10 crop.
So here is my PSE-9 version.
< https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/FileChute/2013-07-06-11-PSEw.jpg >