Adversaries
by Nuzzer

Comment by die2board:
This would have been over the top if the chess pieces on black where actually white

Adversaries
by Nuzzer

Comment by freakin_hilarious:
Cool idea and I like the DOF here, but it just looks strange to me with the pieces all set up but not on an actual chess board.

Adversaries
by Nuzzer

Comment by aprokopiw:
Good idea. I would have liked it more if the pieces in the foreground were whiter though, they are a bit too yellowish.

100 divided by 3
by Nuzzer

Comment by katswig:
I would like to see the lines on the album in better focus?

100 divided by 3
by Nuzzer

Comment by TonyT:
Be careful. People may not understand that.

100 divided by 3
by Nuzzer

Comment by yianisn:
Sorry, can't see the relation to the challenge.

100 divided by 3
by Nuzzer

Comment by kiumars_kashani:
Old But Gold,8

100 divided by 3
by Nuzzer

Comment by Lactobeezor:
Great Title :) Nice depth of field also.

Advance to GO
by Nuzzer

Comment by skylen:
In response to your request for help, I reprocessed your image:


I suggest you save at a higher quality setting always (your JPEG is only ~30KB, but you can use up to 150KB, so make use of it).

The editing steps: (in the free GIMP tool)

- Open original.
- Duplicate background layer. Unsharp mask with radius around 50, amount=1.4, threshold=0. This adds Local Contrasts Enhancement and can really reduce the muddy look on a lot of images.
- Duplicate background layer. Add selective gaussian blur to reduce the JPEG artifact appearance.)
- Duplicate background layer. Add gaussian blur at radius 5, change blending mode to soft light.
- Create new layer, radial gradient fill followed by brushing with a soft round brush to create a grayscale vignette mask. Set blending mode to soft light.

The layers' opacities were adjusted throughout the process until I was happy with them.

(Normally I would try the Curves tool first, but I wanted to do something different and ended up happy with the look never using the curves tool.)

Hope this gives you some ideas. Have fun!! It's a cool image BTW.

Advance to GO
by Nuzzer

Comment by dragonlady:
you needed to experiment with levels and then with curves and brightness/contrast to get a little more contrast instead of the washed out looking grey...might have had more punch if you were to keep the color background: maybe just the green houses because of the complementary color of red...check on all my messed up images..haha.

Message edited by author 2006-07-17 16:40:42.