Romancing the Gorrilla by Carl

And another example

This gives also curious and interesting effects if applied to black and white images

I want to try myself what happens if I add the controls to the filter and if it would really help to get better results.

Here I show what I have done and the default values that is needed to make them transparent and show the same results if they are untouched.

I will see what problems do you get when you use this settings and if they could perhaps damage the effects, I mean they could brighten BUT also remove some of the very well done details, so it is NOT as easy as adding this components to solve and fix it.

SpaceRay, that last example you post here is great!
I wish someone could find a way to do that Sahdow and Highlight enhancement in FF, either as a filter or as a snippet.

Here I show a very good example of how different can be the SAME image with and without Shadow and Highlights.

The first example is with the photo with a plain white background and use directly Preset 1.

This is untouched

Here I have used the first untouched image and have used the ShadowHighlight Controlled by Dave C. Schneider

Although the Highlight is seen in the same way as the ones from the Photoshop tool, the red tones are converted to magenta tones, and the reason is easy to explain, because this RTG filter has added that magenta tone that normally is not seen only in high saturation.

SO this is still not a good solution unless there could be a color balance adjustment in case the image could have wrongly colors.

Here I have tried to test the very good HDRize by Skybase
and using the untouched first image and it gives much better result than the one above, and even perhaps more light and better way to brighten and look somewhat better than photoshop BUT still shows some of the red tones converted to magenta.

Although this is clearly better for me than the above filter

OK, I see what you mean. Adding the green only to the shdows in the case of this test image.
I suppose it's not too hard to add two seperate color balance controls, one for highlights and one for shadows. That way you can seperately control the color balance of the affected areas.
In the mean time, here's what I have come up with. There's surely a better way to do it, but that's up to Inujima and the other pixel math wiz kids here
In the image below the LEFT half of the picture is what you posted from Photoshop's S/H adjustment, and RIGHT half of the picture is what my snippet did.

well bit of fiddling

original

and a couple of bias

middle looks best

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Carl wrote: LOL Ok you guys are busting my " morgantao Ball pit "

I do not know what this means, but if you think that we are putting negative things, is not true in the bad way, this is REALLY AN VERY WELL DONE AND AWESOME filter and you can get wonderful and amazing effect IF you choose very well the photo or image and use the right preset.

On lots of photos I have tried this gives a very dark or wanted colors that spoils much the great artistic effect done by the filter, and that CAN BE SOLVED most of the times with lightening the effect, either with levels, or better with "shadow and highlights" and then you really see the beautiful effect this filter has done.

It is a real pity that this could be really a GREAT AND EXCELLENT filter but I am sorry to say that regretably is let down by the dark colours, would be good IF it had controls for modifying the lightness, contrast and colors.


Of course that you could make a postwork and modify the lighting and colors with other FF filters or in Photoshop but I think that would be good and easier to be able to have everything inside included in this filter already.

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Carl wrote: Spaceray could you post the original flower pic for me to do some test on

Hello Carl, sorry that yesterday I could not upload it for you to make somes test, but here it is for you

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Morgantao wrote: I suppose it's not too hard to add two seperate color balance controls, one for highlights and one for shadows. That way you can seperately control the color balance of the affected areas. In the mean time, here's what I have come up with. There's surely a better way to do it, but that's up to Inujima and the other pixel math wiz kids here In the image below the LEFT half of the picture is what you posted from Photoshop's S/H adjustment, and RIGHT half of the picture is what my snippet did.

Morgantao uploaded this image


WOW!! How you have done that ? This looks really great and unless you enlarge it and look really closely you CAN´T find a difference between both. Very well done in the snippet you have done to make this, will you upload it to the library ?

Although on the previous page I said that the Levels was not good because it deleted the textures over the white background, this DOES NOT HAPPEN if the photo does not have any background and fills the whole size.

I have done this conversion with this RTG filter and then later in Photoshop I corrected the levels to show it in the right way and it looks really well, and THE ONLY problem is that with the filter the levels gets reduced to the darker side and gives those unwanted results.

I hope that with the new update this can be fixed, and if not, it would be easy for Carl to add a simple Levels component at the end

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Quote SpaceRay wrote: I do not know what this means meant light heartedly/humoriously it's a play on the slang saying "busting my balls"

busting my balls definition: When somebody is Bitching at you for no good reason or nagging at you to do something you don't want to do.

Then I was right thinking that the meaning was a negative thing and that I am bothering and annoying you with, but if you read again the above post you will see that if for a good reason, and because I care for you and that the filter could be even better.

I have to say that I am not in any way forcing you to change the filter and add things that you do not want, it could be taken this way as it is now, this is YOUR OWN filter and of course you can decide what to have in your filter and the settings that you want to have.

This is just my own personal point of view, and I think that this is a great and awesome filter BUT is let down only by not having controls for the lightness of the results, and is a pity that such a great filter have this when it could be fixed easily adding a levels component and another possible setting for when the background is light and the levels would not work.

I am very sorry for "busting your balls" but as said is only for a good reason, and because I care for your filter, if not I could just modify it myself and add the needed setting that I would consider needed and use it that way or to keep the usage rank for you, I could make the result without modifying the filter and then use another FF filter or Photoshop to correct and modify the result to be right.

And it is very good how it mixes the colors and founds new ones from the source image

And here is a butterflies collage where the background was plain white but I generated a new one for this filter with the "render clouds" filter in Photoshop in a range of greys from white to black, so this way it could even make more artistic strokes and look even more painterly

Here is a photo of a city buildings I made on a trip and this with the RTG filter and postwork done in Photoshop

Thanks Ghislaine, glad you like them.

I have another example more, is from a haberdashery shop in a open street market I have been once and found this colorful threads on a wall, as you can see in the left side there is part of the original source photo.

All the last 6 examples and this 7th are done with the default preset 1 and without any setting change in the RTG filter and without having changed the filter either as I told before. All the needed postwork adjustments has been done in Photoshop.

AND AS OVERLAY TOO

And this same artistic background made with RTG could be also used as an overlay or mixed with blend modes over another image and get a different effect.

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Morgantao wrote: SpaceRay, first of all, great examples. The power lines example really blew my mind. From such a dull picture of a power line, to a beautyful artwork.

Thanks, glad you like them. Yes, is true that the power lines is really a surprising example, and it blew my mind TOO I could not believe that from this photo I could get such result.

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Morgantao wrote: SpaceRay, can you please upload about 3 more different examples of images you run through the filter and are too dark?

Well, ALL the last seven examples I have put above were dark and needed postwork because the original result after RTG was not good at all.

I will upload them later

meanwhile if you want you could try to use it on these two examples

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Also, upload them after you do the S/H adjustment in Photoshop.

Yes, I will do it this way

And here is another example that shows a dark result from RTG