Before And After

[Joe Copalman]

Seriously fantastic clutter-clearing, Jay.  A few little details like you said, but the main thing my eye is drawn to is the nearly-clipped wingtip and the barely-clipped rear stab.  Was this a crop, or is this the SOOC framing?  Lighting and exposure are phenomenal. 

[Jay Beckman]

Glad you like the edit.  I'm not entirely sure about the framing. I'll have to go back to the original, original and double check.  Good chance it's "as shot" though.  We were pretty close to the touchdown zone at that point.

[Jay Beckman]

Just double checked and this was "as shot" for the framing...   

[Jay Beckman]

I think I need to more closely study what cracks in old prints really look like but this was a first attempt:

Before


After

[Jeff D. Welker]

I like the treatment Jay - definitely gives a "vintage" look to the image. Simulating cracks are difficult at best IMHO. I've tried this before and find it very difficult to replicate the real thing with any accuracy. The cracks I've seen in old photographs are nearly all different in color, width and texture. With that said, I guess you can't go wrong whatever method you use.

Bravo for taking the risk and experimenting with some new techniques.

[Jay Beckman]

Pixels bent while you wait! 

Just trying to grow the bag of tricks.  I should have posted them in the other order and called it a restoration!

[josephea6]

NICE Jay, I love it!

[Joe Copalman]

From my trip to Pima back on 8/23.  Shot at the worst time of the day, with the sun directly overhead, but with the low-slung AlphaJet, that worked to my advantage.  As a pretty hardcore clutter-Nazi, I find Pima to be a very challenging place to shoot.  On the few aircraft where the light kinda-sorta worked, I would deliberately frame the shot in a way in which clutter such as aircraft display signs, tie-down cables, benches, and - where possible - parts of other aircraft, could be cloned out with relative ease.  And you haven't explored the depths of your patience until you've gone for a wide-angle shot of one of the B-52s backed-up against Valencia and waited for that rare moment when there are no cars passing by in the background.  Still a fun place to shoot, and with a collection that is hard to beat.

Nothing too drastic on this on this, I just cleared out the clutter where I could.

[Jeff D. Welker]

Stellar job on the foreground clutter Joe. I believe it is little adjustments like these that make a difference in our images. Because of the angle of the dangle and the lens you used, the background stuff does not draw my eye away from the Alpha - nice image.

[Joe Copalman]

Thanks Jeff.  I typically believe in "truth in advertising," but my eye is just so easily drawn to clutter that it's worth the work.  I'm sure I could fill two or three pages in this thread with shots in which I've cloned out those big black taxiway signs at Willie.

Regarding the aircraft in the background on this shot, I know they're not overpowering, but if anyone has any suggestions on making the Alpha "pop" a bit more against that background, I'm all ears.  Or eyes, or whatever. 

[Jeff D. Welker]

Thanks Jeff.  I typically believe in "truth in advertising," but my eye is just so easily drawn to clutter that it's worth the work.  I'm sure I could fill two or three pages in this thread with shots in which I've cloned out those big black taxiway signs at Willie.

Regarding the aircraft in the background on this shot, I know they're not overpowering, but if anyone has any suggestions on making the Alpha "pop" a bit more against that background, I'm all ears.  Or eyes, or whatever. 

Try making a mask of the Alpha to separate it from the background. Then ever-so-slightly desaturate the background. You can even slightly blur the background. This will help to separate the primary focus of the image from everything else. When I say desaturate and blur, I mean almost imperceptibly. It won't take much to create the "pop".

Just my 2-cents.

[Joe Copalman]

Heh.  Already took the desaturation route, and the aircraft in the background are sun-bleached enough as it is to where it really made no difference.  Trouble is the Alpha is similarly-faded, and I did apply a smidge of saturation on it with the rest of the image masked.  Again, another pitfall of shooting at PASM.

[Dave S.]

Thought I'd take a stab at some selective colorization.  I used this image because of the relative ease at selecting the high contrast colors.  Something doesn't look quite right about it, but this is my first real stab.  Comments/suggestions?

[cpasley]

Man I have soooo much to learn, I cant imagine being able to edit just selective portions of the photo like Daves bike, looks fantastic, Jays and Jeffs treatments as well, I am now looking at courses at GCC to learn how to do that kinda thing and more cause me and editing dont mix

[Jay Beckman]

This Miami Air 737-800 was a bit of a dramatic transformation so I thought maybe I'd share some processing steps:

SOOC (Plane flew right through a cloud shadow on short final at Sky Harbor)


Finished Image as it looked in CS5:


The Layers (what each does is explained below)

From the bottom up (which makes more sense because you layer from bottom to top)
- Background .. Original Image imported from Lightroom
- Layer 1 .. Mask Layer .. Aircraft Only
- Viveza 2 .. Nik Viveza treatment to aircraft only (because of the mask layer)
- Highlights .. Brightest fuselage highlights promoted to their own layer and "Screen" layer property applied (makes the dazzling whites dazzle more)
- Curves 1 .. Allows for overall luminance adjustment of the entire plane.
- Fuselage WB .. Neutralizes the whites which were picking up a lot of blue
- Vivieza 2 Copy .. Copy of the Viveza layer with a High Pass filter applied.  Changing the property of this layer to "Overlay" is a sharpening technique (again, plane only!)
- "Layer 1 Copy" .. Inverted mask so that we now affect only the sky and not the plane
- Gradient Fill 1 .. Puts a little dark to light drama in the sky from the top of the frame down
- Hue / Saturation .. Puts some color in the sky and allows me to tweak the hue to a slightly less Robin's Egg Blue shade.

The finished image:


Questions, Comments, Thoughts most welcome...