Well his point was that you need to start out with a picture of decent quality. If you give him that picture 20 times larger, then he can work on it and reduce it to that size after he has retouched it and the result should be pretty good.
And if I may ask without too much highjacking… does anyone know of a good tool or methid of doing the following? In some photos the lighting is uneven so that one corner is too dark when the opposite is OK. Is there a way to apply a filter that would lighten or darken gradually from one point to another point? In other words, something like "starting at the bottom edge with 0% up to the upper edge with 100%, lighten the picture by 20. So the bottom would remain the same, the center be lightened by 10, the top by 20…
I would find this quite useful but I do not know how to do it.
In Photoshop, I add a new layer on top and add a gradient to it, from black to transparent. Then use the “soft light” mode to blend with the underlying original and change the opacity until it looks right.
Hmmm… I don’t have photoshop, but it had not ocurred to me it might be done using another layer. I’ll see if I can do it that way using the programs I have (Photodeluxe I am thinking of…) Thanks for the hint.
Here’s my takeon the car photo - also a 15 minute job.
Just did it manually with the lasso tool, and some fine-tuning; then hue/saturation, hue all the way to the right.
You are missing the much easier and more powerful way to do this trick in photoshop. It involves using channels, which no one seems to use really… But, it is there and a WICKED tool.
Here’s the steps:
Make the layer as you suggest
Do the gradient as you suggest
Make the gradient lightest where you want the most change in the image.
paint the rest of the layer black.
Copy the entire layer and paste it into a new channel.
Under the “Select” menu choose “load selection”
Under the dialog that comes up, choose the new channel as the source channel and leave operation as new selection
Hide the gradient layer and select the image layer as active.
Play with the brightness/contrast controls. The channel will make the controls most active where the channel is whitest… not active at all where it is totally black.
If you are using Photoshop you can also do it with the color burn or color dodge tool(I forget which one).
Use the eye dropper tool to extract some of the blue(on the car for instance) then exchange that color for a yellow and paint it on. You might have to fiddle with the hue a bit but I have found that these tools provide the most realistic results because they maintain all the little color variations that make a photo look believable.
Heh, this is getting popular. I want to point out that the reason the hue slider works is because the HSB (hue / saturation / brightness) model is similar to the LAB (luminosity / some arbitrary alphabets) model in that the brightness is separated from the color.
These four took an extra 10 minutes. Like I said before, you can simply select all the bluish and neutral (grayish/white/black) parts of the car whichever way is most comfortable for you. (I like the wand and manually adding on pixels, you may like quick mask or making a selection from a path.) Then just change the hue. That’s it. All your different shades of blue will change to the corresponding shades of your target color. Then maybe you can play with saturation if you want - if the colors look too contrasty for the lighting condition. On the first computer I did this work on, the saturation looked fine; on my other computer, it looks a wee bit saturated.
I can’t pull up your image. All I get is an AngelFire logo.
Earthling,
I did get yours, and it is a fine effort, but surely you do not consider this as passing muster, do you? You did a good job maintaining the original gamma (the histograms are reasonably close), but:
[li] You completely changed the whole color of the red spot in the engine, practically obliterating it.[/li]
[li] The magenta item in the engine is now tan.[/li]
[li] The light gray item is now yellow.[/li]
[li] The metalic gray sheens of the ridges under the hood have disappeared.[/li]
[li] The saturation of the hood’s fabric tear is about 50% more intense.[/li]
[li] The patch of highlight on the grill’s top is still hued toward blue.[/li]
[li] The entire shadow area under the grill is nearly identical in color to the original.[/li]
[li] The saturation of the pinstripe is nearly opposite its saturation in the original.[/li]
[li] Everywhere, there is color oozing beyond its original blue confines.[/li]
[li] The car’s window glass still reflects blue, as do its hubcaps (except where some yellow bleeds over).[/li]
[li] The turn signal indicator light between the guy’s legs desaturated significantly. The area underneath it turned green.[/li]
[li] The car’s rear bumper is still blue.[/li]
[li] Yellow is bleeding from the car’s top into the mountains.[/li]
[li] The headlight’s trim is still blue.[/li]
[li] The patch of reflection underneath the car is still blue.[/li]
[li] The keyhole no longer looks metalic.[/li]
I’m not knocking what you did. You did an excellent job considering the task. And it would likely slip past eyes that do not work with color day in and day out. But are we not demanding a melancholy perfection here? If the OP will allow what you’ve done, I say fine.
Really? Are you not getting either of the images? Earlier in the day I got the logo, but now it seems to be working fine. Weird. Try “refreshing” or something.
I didn’t spend much time getting the selection mask just perfect, so, there is a bit of problems around the edges. Just did it enough to show that it is pretty doable. Given a few minutes, it can be done where it is pretty much undetectable, if not completely so.
Well, it just says, “Hello, [Guest]! You are looking at pulykamell’s photo albums.” And nothing is there.
Look, I don’t mean to cause a riot over any of this. Let me just back up and re-approach my response to the OP. If anybody believes that, in the spirit of GQ, I’m still in error, let me know.
Dear OP,
You can do a reasonably decent job of colorizing images in direct proportion to the image’s complexity: the more complex, the more difficult the task. Depending on what degree of accuracy you are willing to accept, your efforts will be somewhere between miserable and pretty good. But you will spend an incredible amount of time on a complex image (i.e., one with many elements and similar colors) and might not ever come out with something that is undetectable by professionals.
Libertarian, I understand how my work may be painful to look at for someone who works with color day in and day out, but what I was trying to demonstrate was that changing colors isn’t all that hard given the right color workspace; I wasn’t trying to get it published in National Geographic. Now, would it be hard to make this particular piece pass muster with a color pro? Well, I think trying to make anything perfect demands a lot of effort, no matter what the task is.
Libertarian I have an interesting idea. I think it can probably be done better than you might think. Anyway, on to the idea.
Someone, send me a decent quality image of a car or something similar (res range on the order of 300x400 to 600x800). I will “repaint” it. I will then submit the original and altered version to here and Libertarian will try to decide which was the original and which is the altered version.
Having seen a good number of Libertarian’s posts, I believe that if it comes down to him just picking one and playing the 50-50 odds he would confess it. And, if there are elements that tip off the altered version, he would honestly point out what they were.
Man, I’m just gonna give up. I had the photo account set-up wrong. I fixed it. You should be able to view it now. If not, forget it. Anyhow, my example just backs up earthlink’s point. It ain’t spectacular…I think I paid attention to most of the main points. It took 15 minutes, and viewing at that size, without enlarging to 600% to check out each individual pixel, and without a photo to compare it to, I think it’s pretty damned convincing…
Still empty, Puly. But that’s okay. I’ve no doubt but what you did a good job.
ScottH, I accept your challenge, and yes, I’ll tell you exactly what I find, including if I find I can’t tell the difference. Keep in mind that the more complex the image, the easier it will be to tell. Just hollar when you’re ready.
