Greetings everyone, and welcome to the third week of the November One Four Challenge!

As many of you who have been participating in the One Four Challenge know, Robyn, our illustrious host, is needing to take a break from hosting to take some down time for herself.  She has asked me to host the One Four Challenge for the month of November, and I happily accepted! 😀

Everything will stay the same, except instead of linking to her post you will link to mine for the month of November.  I will publish my weekly post at her usual time (6:30 am Aussie time on Mondays [UTC+11 AEDT]), so that everyone can start linking as usual.  Then throughout the week I will visit everyone’s posts and leave a comment (like Robyn does now).  It will be fun and a bit challenging, but I’m totally up for it.

I’m honored to be able to substitute-host the One Four Challenge for November while Robyn takes a break.  I will schedule posts for the first Mondays in November.  November has 5 Mondays, but we’ll play for 4 and they will be the 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd.

After that come December, we’ll be back on Robyn’s site with the review month for December…and it will begin on the 7th December.  Robyn plans to use December to wrap up our challenge for now.  We’ll return at a later date with the challenge [ if there is interest ].

A reminder from Robyn:

As the One Four Challenge will be taking a break, I’d like to give you some options for a couple of other fun editing challenges.. and I know you’ll be welcome to join in.

1. After Before Friday is a weekly editing challenge hosted by Ben – you can read more here and..
2. One Photo Focus is a monthly editing challenge hosted by Stacy – you can read more here.

If you’d like to keep being challenged, I hope you’ll give one or both of these a go – they are fun and hosted by some very nice and talented people 😀

I want to send out a BIG THANK YOU to those of you who are participating this month.

I wasn’t sure how many people would still play given that the challenge is winding down.  Thank you for making me feel welcome.  Fifteen people are playing this month, check them out if you haven’t had a chance yet…

1. Julie – Julie Powel
2. Elizabatz – Elizabatz Gallery
3. Chris – SV-Take It Easy
4. Traudel – Geriatri’x Photography
5. Agnes – Agnes’s World
6. Marsha – Cool Quilting
7. Rajiv – Rajiv Chopra
8. Michelle – Michelle Lunato Photography
9. Cee – Cee’s Photography
10. Joanne – Coffee Fuels My Photography
11. Victoria – Gathering Eggs
12. Stacey – Learning to See Light
13. Etol – Creative Busyness
14. Green Knight – flickr page
15. Nora – Nora’s Photos 4 U

My image:

Your kind thoughts and comments are appreciated!

Tutorial

This week I wanted to make things a bit simpler, plus I had no idea where to take my photo after last week. Keeping with the theme of using the Luminosity Masks with various filters, I amped up the colors and added a bit more texture to the feathers.
Let’s look at my layers…

1. First, I brought my image into GIMP¹, (the image I created right after I made minor edits in DarkTable² from week 1).  Then I ran the Luminosity Mask script (I discuss this in more detail here) [Filters->Generic->Luminosity Masks(saulgoode)], which gives me 9 channels that I can use to make various masks easily.
2. Next, I made a duplicate of my base layer.  And then amped up the reds by using the Hue-Saturation Adjustment [Colors->Hue-Saturation].  I pushed the red saturation to 100%.  I added a Luminosity Mask to have only the parts I wanted more red, which in this case was the lights [Layer->Mask->Add Layer Mask; selecting Channel L]. (click to enlarge)

   

   Red amped to 100%

   

   Red After L Mask

   
   
3. Again, I made a duplicate of my base layer.  And then I amped up the blues and cyans by using the Hue-Saturation Adjustment [Colors->Hue-Saturation].  I pushed the blue and cyan saturation to 100%.I added a Luminosity Mask to have only the parts I wanted more blue, which in this case was the darks [Layer->Mask->Add Layer Mask; selecting Channel D]. (click to enlarge)

   

   Blue/Cyan amped to 100%

   

   Blue/Cyan After D Mask

   
   
4. I felt that the face of the hummingbird was a bit light, so I added a bit of black by creating a new transparent layer, changing the blend mode to Overlay, and then painting black on the areas that I felt were a bit too light.  I reduced the opacity to 20%. (click to enlarge)

   

   Red & Blue Masked Layers Combined

   

   After Painting Black on Face

   
   
5. Lastly, I felt the photo needed something more, so I ran a G’MIC Plug-in Filter³ called Ink Wash [Filter->G’MIC->Black & White->Ink Wash], and added a mid-tones mask [Layer->Mask->Add Layer Mask; selecting Channel M]. (click to enlarge)

   

   Ink Wash

   

   Ink Wash After M Mask

   
   
   
   Giving me my final image once all the layers are combined… 

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Your Image:

It’s over to you again and to your image 😀

About the challenge and how it works:

• This challenge is about processing 1 image in 4 different ways over 4 weeks.
• We will all  process / post edit (our own chosen image) and share a different version each week. Process it however you like… and tell us a bit about it. You don’t have to show the original image unless you’d like to.  (I’m going to show mine in week 4 along with the 4 variations from the month). Others show theirs from the start. The choice is yours.
• Try new things, experiment.  Be as creative or subtle as you wish to be. All skill levels are welcome.

Please Tag and Link up – this makes our challenge work.

• For WordPress blogs – Tag all of your One Four posts with One Four Challenge, so we can view your posts in the WordPress Reader. See this tutorial on how this works.
• For Blogger and other platforms – If you are on another blogging platform, please leave a link in a comment on this post, so we can find you!
• For everyone joining in – please leave a link to your post, under my corresponding blog post for the week.

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Until next time…
~nic

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¹ GIMP is Open Source software that is available for all platforms (Linux, Mac, and Windows), it is a photo editor that does many (if not all) of the things you can do in Photoshop. You can download it for free here. The GIMP online manual can be found here.

Like Wilber? You can get him here.

² DarkTable is Open Source software that is available for Linux and Mac, it is a photo editor that does many of the things you can do in Lightroom, like process RAW files.  You can download it here.  The DarkTable online manual can be found here.

³ G’MIC Plug-in for GIMP is a plug-in that has a ton of filters, you can download it here.