Before and After - Winter Scene

[RichardBrackin]

I suppose this is the right place for this ...

I haven't been a member here long but I have enjoyed looking at everyone's work and wanted to share with you a job we did recently for a series of airport wall murals in Vermont to get your opinions.
The customer sent us a drum scan to clean up and 'make it look brighter and punchier.' They also needed me to get rid of the tree on the right and slightly extend the image beyond what was actually there but 'keep it natural looking.' gheez!!!

Looking back with a relatively fresh brain, I see some things I would have done a bit differently and I'm just curious if you noticed them, too. I'd also like to know what you would have done.

oh yeah ... I had roughly TWO hours to turn the job around and get it printed.

regards
Richard
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Details of the drum scan were:
0.96" x 1.4" at 5000ppi (7170x4825 pixels) 99MB RGB file.

Details of the finished job were:
110.25" x 257.25" at 50ppi (12,861 x 5511 pixels) 270MB CMYK file.
Printer: VuTek 2360SC Six Color Piezo Inkjet onto pressure sensitive vinyl stock (basically a big decal).

[Racc Iria]

Wow, that looks great! I don't see anything wrong with it.

Perhaps if you gave us some idea of the steps you took to get there, we might have ideas for other ways to do it. There's a hundred different ways to do just about everything in Photoshop. If it looks good, you didn't do it wrong!

I don't know what your size constraints were, but the only thing I would have done differently would be to include a little more of the sky, at least enough to see the tops of the trees. In television, we call that headroom (I know it's not a person, but the same principle applies). I keep looking up there expecting to see it. But, you probably had to crop the image to make it fit the area they wanted.

Fastastic job! What airport is it in? I have a friend who sometimes flies up to Vermont. If he's ever near there, I'll see if he can find it and take some pictures.

--Racc

[Gary Richardson]

Only obvious thing I can see, is the piece of fence at the bottom of the tree on the right. Should have been cloned out, after you moved the tree from the left.
Also a bit of grey shed/outbuilding to left of right most tree, that also needs removing.

Otherwise nice work.

[Kraellin]

you did a great job in taking out the evergreen. i'm also going to assume the client was happy. you did a good job.

however, i do think you missed on the barn/cabin and i also think you could have made it 'punchier' than you did.

i cropped the picture first. the real picture there is the cabin/barn with the highlights being the snow landscape. since the snow is nothing more than highlighting, i reduced the amount there. but, that's only a matter of opinion, so dont worry, you did ok there depending on what the client wants. i just liked it better cropped. it also has the added advantage of 'taking out the tree' at the same time.

to punch it up you could have done several things. i first sharpened it quite a bit. i also did an edge enhance to punch it up even more, but that was just to REALLY punch it up. client may not have liked that much.

next, i needed to bring out the barn/cabin. for that, i made another layer and masked off everything but the cabin. i then used the 'fast fix' plugin to bring out the red, contrast and brighten. this reduces the tree shadow on the barn and really brings the barn out.

and that's it. i'll also add here that on your original the edge enhance prolly wouldnt have had as much of an effect as your original was a much higher resolution, so it might have worked perfectly fine.

the bottom line is always 'did the client like it?'. if so, then you did a great job! if not, well, it was still pretty good, but 'needs work'

K.

[Racc Iria]

Wow, Gary. You've got really good eyes.

I stared at that thing for 10 minutes and didn't see that. I mean, I saw it... it just didn't register what it was. I think I was looking too hard and couldn't see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

Anyway... good catch.

--Racc

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Racc Iria,

What I do in cases like this, where I'm trying to spot differences, is to download both before and after images, then view them in a slideshow. By flicking backwards and forwards between the two, its easier to see the differences.

Kraellin, nice crop, balances the image better, but I think possibly a bit overdone on the edge enhance if the intention was to produce a realistic image. May be due to posted image size, probably looks better full size.

[RichardBrackin]

Thank you for your time, comments and ideas. This is such a great site and has such knowledgable people.
We get these kinds of emergencies about three times a week in varying states of disarray.
I'll be sure to post the next 'doozie' that comes in if you want me to.

Racc Iria, I believe this graphic (along with two others) sit in Burlington Regional Airport in Burlington, VT. We did a winter, spring and fall scene.
Yeah. The customer was much happier than I was about the winter pic. I would have preferred to spend three hours or more working on each of them but I just didn't have that luxury due to 6 or 7 reasons beyond my control.

The reason for the odd cropping:
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I had to crop it to that exact proportion since that was the size of the wall the graphic had to cover. While I would have liked to have cropped the image better it was simply not an option.

Simple stuff:
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I removed the jeep/land rover truck from the original.
I removed the ATV headlights from inside the barn.
I cleaned up some snow on the roof.
I cloned some snow in the snow bank and created some open fields on the right in the distance.

Kinda hard stuff:
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I removed a tree that took over the scene. I was gonna leave the tree and actually sent a proof where I bullt the other side of the tree but they told me they didn't like the way it took over the scene.

Adjusting the image:
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To adjust the image, I used the old reliable tools in adjustment layers like levels, curves, etc. I also made good use of the cloning tool. Basically I needed to take the cozy winter afternoon scene and brighten it up where it still looked real but it would appear to be earlier in the day.
They wanted punch and I probably should have punched in more.
Kraellin, The sky was very cloudy so I didn't want to make the barn toooo bright but I do wish I had made it brighter than I did.

oddities that may or may not have shown up due to the image size.
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The sky is behind the forefront trees near the horizon line.
The snow is at two different levels in that tree section as well.
I forgot to remove part of the shed. nice catch Gary !!
The fence where the pine tree was had some problems. nice catch Gary!!
I left the palette sitting on the front right side of the barn.
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To expand on the sloppy tree and fence work on the right side of the image ... I had spent all my time tweaking the original tree because initially that was what they wanted. I emailed them a soft proof and with about 20 minutes to go, they emailed me back and decided the tree was just too overpowering.
They asked if we could just replace that tree and -- or course -- I said, 'no problem' knowing full well I wasn't gonna be able to pull it off in time.

We have a problem with contracted installers buying their plane tickets before they discuss turnaround time with us.
We had to clean up, print, laminate, trim, and ship three images the same day so I told them when the cutoff time would be and sent them this image you see here for final approval. I told them parts of it weren't perfect but they were ok with what they saw. They had taken too much time to get the artwork to us and the contract would begin in two days so the installers had to have the images on the wall by the time the contract began.
(part of what makes this business more work then fun sometimes).