April 05 Contest

[denschneider]

heres my try

[jsepulveda]

Hello all. Good luck to everyone!

[Racc Iria]

Here are the basics of what I did...

I started with a levels adjustment on the midtones. Then I duplicated the layer and created a mask for the couple and punched up their saturation a little. Then I duplicated the background layer and added a slight blur to create a slight depth of field. Then I duplicated the couple layer and blurred that a few pixels to smooth out the skin tones and masked off the areas I didn't want and reduced opacity to produce a pleasing blend. Then, I carefully used the healing brush and patch tool to remove the 5 O'clock shadow from the groom. Then came the challenge... the bride's smile is from source1.tif. It was tricky getting the proper scale and perspective. In all, parts of her nose, cheeks, all of her lips and teeth, and part of her chin were replaced. Once that was done, the new smile and surrounding areas were color corrected to match and the same duplication and blurring were used to smooth out the skin tones. Once I was happy with all the details and saved the image, I used the measure tool along the window and rotated the canvas to straighten the image (that tilt was bugging me) and cropped it to create a nice balance in composition between the couple and their surroundings.

[JohnMc]

Tried to stay fairly realistic...there were a few technical issues that needed fixing...borrowed a bit from the other source images and made this!

[righthanddesign]

Ok here's mine. It is a 4X6 format so if they did ever want to use it they could. I also tried to keep it as real as possible (no blurry skin). If any one wants to see a close up I can post it. Mine looks better bigger I think. GREAT SUBMISSIONS so far... keep it up

[endymi0n]

Okeydokey, last but not least here's my first entry to a competition, hope you like it. Didn't do much cropping and facial editing as I think grinning is not the style of the bride. I improved her smile a bit and focused on the atmosphere.

workflow:
- extracted window and bride & groom to separate layers w/Knockout
- separate color treatment
- changed church to copper style
- blue radial gradient overlay to support blue window
- window focusfixed and color-enhanced
- light streaks: new layer copy, radial blur (zoom), source point to the top, layer set to lighten
-various little tweaks, ask if you want =)

***edit*** I gave it another try with improved cropping, facial expressions and lens distortion management ***edit***

[venivedi]

Here's my entry.
I considered the stained glasses and flower vases as a obstacle, so just worked with some extracted objects(?)

[agentpict]

Here's my attempt at the photo retouch April contest. My thoughts going into the retouching was to keep it as natural looking as possible and to add a couple of subtle effects to the overall background and make the bride and groom the main focus of attention.

Cheers.

[pjulich]

I've spent all the time I can afford on this. It was fun. One of the biggest challenges is how to get it down to <100k without ruining it. I'd love to hear how others approached it.

[Mark_E._Martin]

As you can see, I don't mind diving right in.... I tried not to go too far from the original image (ie, not getting too artsy), but dude's hands were buggin' me.... Love the posts so far, and I look forward to learning from all you guys and gals. Who knows, maybe I'll even be of help to someone sometime.

Take care,

Mark

[jaykita]

Wonderful entries.
As seen below, my idea was to substantially darken the bckgr in order to highlight the bridal couple. The stained glass is an integral part of the photo given the nature of the occasion.
Good luck to all!

[kiska]

Here ya' go.

[T Paul]

1. Straightened Image
2. Applied Highlight/Shadows filter to bring out lost detail
3. Added Bride's face from other photo - blended in
4. Added Groom's eyes from other photo
5. Added noise to new face to match existing noise
6. Removed gap in Groom's pant leg
7. Removed Groom's hand from Bride's waist (this could have stayed, but I remember the photographer at my wedding kept making sure we didn't do that as many times it looks like the hand is growing from the waist)
8. Straigtened Groom's tie
9. Whitened Teeth and brightened various areas with White set to multiply
10. Ran image through Neat Image to further filter noise
11. Smoothed out remaining JPEG artifacts and any blemishes
12. Cropped image
13. Applied Levels adjustment to brighten image
14. Lightened veil to help it stand out
15. Boost colors with Selective Color Adjustment and Hue/Sat adjustment
16. Removed color cast
17. Selectively sharpened image.

P.S.
Remember to view image full size. You make have to click the enlarge button at the bottom right corner of the image after you open it to fully see it full size.

[soleah]

For the bride's smile, I left the upper lip of the original as is, added just the teeth and lower lip from source1. Final touch, added a very, very subtle white vignette.

Good luck everyone!

[ogee]

Here is mine...