Friday, November 18, 2011

The Beauty of Destruction, part 6 - Torch Cut


Camera App: BracketMode

Additional Apps used for post processing:

ProHDR - for an HDR picture made from one single photo. Reason: Because I had no tripod at hand I unfortunately moved a bit too much for ProHDR to align the two photos correctly, which resulted in an unsharp HDR picture. So I did an HDR from a single photo, choosing the darker one for it because the contrast and details had been much better on the molten metal surface than it was on the overexposed photo where that surface was almost white. White pixels contain no information thus they are useless for further processing but underexposed pictures may still be corrected for as long as there aren't too many black pixels included.
I saved two versions from ProHDR - one with low contrast but lighter and one with strong contrast but darker. Then I created an HDR picture again from these two versions in ProHDR. The result was a much better HDR picture than the first one. I also tried SimplyHDR, but no matter what settings I tried I wasn't satisfied with the outcome.
MonoPhix - to create a b/w version of my HDR picture. I prefer MonoPhix for this job because it allows to use color filters. I used a Yellow filter on the rusty surface to obtain a maximum of details. Blue is the complementary color of red, which means that a picture containing much red will turn very dark if you apply a blue filter. On the other hand a red filter applied on a red picture will let all red surfaces appear almost white while a red filter applied on a blue surface will let this one look almost black. Green is a more neutral filter so in most cases a green filter gives nice contrasts to a b/w picture. I was choosing a yellow filter because it gave me a lighter picture than the green filter gave me but still the picture had nice contrast and was rich on details. Don't believe me? Try it out and see yourself ;o)!
Blender - to blend the b/w version with the HDR version in normal mode. This de-saturated the picture a lot because I gave it only 27% of the HDR version.
ArtistaHaiku - for an outlined ink version, almost no color.
FilterStorm4 - one of the most powerful apps available for picture editing on iPhone and iPad recently had an update which motivated me to work with it and test the new version. I loved FilterStorm since I used it the first time because of it's well thought and ergonomic design. Beginners might feel a bit helpless at first because of the many features it offers but once you're used to it you don't want to miss it anymore. I opened the version created in Blender and I added the Ink version as a second exposure. Then I applied a Gradient mask, placing the big circle in the middle of the lower half on the right edge and pulling the small circle over to the the middle of the upper half on the left edge. This revealed the Ink layer partially, with a soft transition from right to left into the de-saturated HDR layer. But like the transition was soft and straight I saved this result and I reloaded it as a second exposure again to the de-satureated HDR version. I did this to apply a mask because I wanted the torch cut piece of steel standing out sharp from the Ink background. I loved the outcome of this and now I needed a suitable frame.
KingCamera - I loaded my picture into KingCamera because this app comes with some very nice frames and structures. The one that I liked is 9th from left in the line of frames. It has no specific name.
PicGrunger - for a slight Grunge look. I chose Aged effect, Strength set to about 25%. Style: Palooza, Texture: Original.
Perfectly Clear - After transferring my picture to my laptop computer I found that it could use a little more contrast which I changed in  Perfectly Clear. Usually this really cool app tends to brighten a picture up so I set Exposure to full left, Contrast and Vibrancy to full right plus I gave it a little more Sharpness.
A+Signature - after I was done with my picture all I needed was to add my copyright watermark but this time I wanted to give it an extra touch of my handwritten initials. A+Signature is just perfect for that job. You may add any handwritten or drawn markings to your pictures, scale them, turn them and place them wherever you want. To use the same stuff again and again you can even store your creations in the app catalog.

My new picture shows a steel part that was once holding one of the huge electric motors of old electric locomotive 3609, now cut apart with a powerful torch as the old lady got wrecked.

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