Here we are at week three of the four week challenge. I really picked a difficult photo this month. It was all about that hot air balloon, but I just haven’t been inspired to do much with this thing. After spending a lot of time dorking around with this image this week I came to a nice edit that I like. It was a long road to this image, and normally if I spent this amount of time on a photo I would toss it, because I don’t like to ‘force’ a photo.
First I changed the sky again, which required fixing everything else in the photo to go with the new sky. It was ok, a little sickly sweet and felt fake… then I started playing around with the artistic filters in G’MIC for GIMP plug-in and I got an image I like. It is similar to the trees from January, but I got here from a very different path. It is a little Scanner Darkly, and I think that is pretty cool…
Kind thoughts and comments are welcome!
I have joined a month-long photo post-processing challenge called One Four Challenge, hosted by Robyn at Captivate Me. “This challenge is about processing １ image in 4 different ways over 4 weeks.” Every Monday Robyn posts a new version of her photo and challenges us to do the same each week.
Come back tomorrow Wednesday for the tutorial, until then, here’s a sneak peek (the compression required to make this a .gif gives it a blocky look)…
Until next time…
~nic
Photography by Nic 
An interesting experiment….not really my kind of thing, but it works here! 🙂
Thanks, Suej! I agree that it isn’t for everyone or every image. 😀
I actually really like this! Has a kind of comic style in it 🙂
Thanks, Sari! I’m glad you like it, I have no idea what I’m going to do for next week. Eep.
I love what you have done with this image!!
Thanks, Now At Home! It was fun to play around. 😀
It is funny, cartoonish and I like your willingness to experiment. I especially love that gif on the bottom, like a mini cartoon.
Thanks, Lore! I didn’t think of the .gif as a small cartoon, but I’m glad you like it. 😀 I really felt like I had to experiment with this image this week, I was just kind of bored with only changing the sky again. 😛
I like what you did here, I know what you mean about it being a challenge to come up with new interesting ways to edit each week and each image has its own challenges. This works really well and the balloon still has weight and balance in the image. Nice job on the sky too 🙂
Thanks, Stacey! This image just isn’t inspiring for some reason, but I worked it and I like this week’s version, I’m glad you do too. 😀
Hi Nic, you always go to such effort to share with us. Thank you. Its great! It really is a different take and definitely has a cartoon feel about it. I like that you tried this 😀 My preference (so far) for this image is leaning more to realism – but you never know 😜 Good work!
Thanks, Robyn. I liked how in previous months I learned new things and week 4 was a combination of the previous three weeks. This image just hasn’t given me the same inspiration. I’m going to have to pick something better next month. 😛
Our choice of image really does affect our inspirations doesn’t it Nic? ..and finding it can be tricky sometimes 😜
Looking forward to week 4 – I think you do well, whatever you’re working on and with such variety!!
I have no idea what I’m going to do next week… eep! Yeah for some reason the previous months the image really spoke to me and I got some great edits. This one wants to be realistic and it has thrown me for a loop! 😛 I pushed it anyway and I like the effect I got this week… my favorite part is that you can see the stars and moon on the balloon really well now. 😀
You’ll do something amazing Nic 😃
I like that you have pushed this image beyond its everyday.
Have fun. Play. Experiment.
Thanks! I will 😀
An interesting departure from last week. Although I am not a fan of this type of image, I appreciate the what you have done.
Thank you for your honesty, Ben. I’m finding that this particular image is making me want to keep it realistic, but realistic is boring.. so after I changed the sky and revamped the colors to suit the sky it felt fake. Plus I didn’t ‘learn’ anything, and this challenge I like to challenge myself and learn something new each week. So I decided to play around with the plug-in. I knew it wouldn’t be for everyone, but at least I got to learn something this week. 😀
great idea and very imaginative! It’s a poster! I don’t know that plugin from Gimp but I like Gimp though I use PS now. And I like the gif!!!
Thanks, Cybele! I just found out about that plug-in fairly recently… I used it to get ‘Freaky Details’ on the AB Friday One Photo Focus, so I wanted to see what some of the other things in the plug-in did… there are a ton of options in the plug-in!
This is quite a fun edit… looks a little like what you would see in a comic strip – with a simplified colour scheme and stylised shapes. I think it works!
Thanks, Chris! I’m so glad you like it. 😀