Creative Effects Challenge No. 194 - RAW Winter Ice

[hmca]

The photographer is interested in suggestions for cropping, what to emphasise and dealing with the very flat light winter light.
It will be interesting to see how our members will address this image.

1. Participants in the challenge may provide a screenshot of their edits within the RAW converter of their choice
along with the reasons for their edits.

2. Following their initial edits members may use whatever “tools" they wish to create an image that portrays their artistic vision for the image
as long as the character of the original image is not lost. You may not add anything to the image that wasn’t already there.

3. Including information on plug-ins, actions, external editors, textures, sky replacements etc that were used will only help to inform members
of some of the creative options that are available to today’s photographer.

4. Including layer stacks may be something to consider when presenting a final edit.



Comments are restricted to complimenting another member's edits.

You have until Thursday February 16th to submit your edits.  The photographer will then choose three favorite renditions.


This is a screenshot of the image we will be working on>



You can download the file here.

[pontiac1940]

Neat ice formations. 
hmca I did a quick edit but am unable to upload at 10:08 MST

 

[kdcintx]

I like the calmness and serenity of this wintry scene.

Can't upload edited version as of 2/4/23 12:15 central time. Will try again later.

[hmca]

So sorry, Clive and Karen.  I am looking forward to seeing your work.  I always find Cubeupload easy to use. I choose direct link and copy paste to post....if you are interested in trying it.

[fotofrank]

Thanks for this Helen.





Cropped, flipped, cleaned up distracting elements, finished in NIK Color Efex Pro custom preset.

[hmca]

Thanks for getting this challenge started with a beautifully toned image, fotofrank. I like the flip.

[pontiac1940]

I got a little arty with the photo. 
Briefly: 
-- straightened the horizon
-- cloned out an offending dark branch in upper right 
-- reopened in ACR and made assorted adjustments (should have the changes somewhere)
-- duplicated the BG
-- made a marquee tool selection duplicated and added a blue stroke border 
-- blurred the BG layer

If I was to do another edit I might make the off-colored ice bluer. 
 

[hmca]

Interesting and unexpected edit, Clive.

Feb 5, 2023 0:07:21 GMT pontiac1940 said:

If I was to do another edit I might make the off-colored ice bluer. 

No limit on submissions. Post as many as you would like.

[kdcintx]

I like the calmness and serenity of this wintry scene. Edited it ACR and PSE. As the photographer noted, the lighting is flat so I added some color without replacing the sky and did a little dodging to clean the dirty ice. Cloned out the debris in the water. To me, the interest is the ice formations on the trees, so I cropped to draw attention to the trees/ice while leaving enough background to add context to the scene.

i.ibb.co/Mh8CPgy/Lake-Huron-Ice.jpg

[hmca]

Thanks for sharing the feeling that the image imparts to you, Karen. I can see where the delicate colors you chose to enhance the image with reflect your vision for the scene.

[hmca]

For my base edit I wanted to push the exposure to the right. I hope it will help me achieve the look that I want to create for future edits.
I will often flip and image. However, I don't think I would have thought to do it with this one if I hadn't seen fotofrank 's edit first. I like the weight being on the left.....although I could also understand where this might not work for the photographer who might want to keep it more accurate to the location.  I should have added that I continued working with it in PS to get a lighter look.

[hmca]

I wanted to create a high key minimalist look. I started with my image above and cloned out the dock. The difficult part was removing the section visible in the gap in the tree. I selected it, covered it with the color or the water and carefully brought back some ice. I combined the high key and a bit of dynamic contrast filters from Silver Efex for the finished image.

[tourerjim]

Look at this image for too long and like nothing has changed 😁 I particularly like the ripples in the water. 

[hmca]

You've opened up the shadows, enhanced the color and stayed true to the photographer's original vision, Jim.

[PeteB]

Hi Helen
The challenge for me was to try to keep the snow white, recover info from the water & sky, and deal with the cool (blue) temperature. With those goals in mind I made adjustments in ACR and I then applied Nik filters for details. But I ended up with the color blue dominating the image. So I decided to convert to B&W using Silver Efex (preset Hint of Blue). I also straightened the horizon and slightly blurred the background. For cropping I thought the original framing (in a 3x2 aspect ratio) divided the image in half. By cropping using a 4x3 ratio, I thought the subject becomes more dominant.

Thanks for the image