Greetings everyone, and welcome to the fourth week of the One Four Challenge for November!
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.
Next week we will take a break (Monday November 30), when we return 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.
- After Before Friday is a weekly editing challenge hosted by Ben – you can read more here and..
- 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 😀
My image:
This week I really had no idea where to take my image. I tried a few things but wasn’t getting where I wanted. My husband looked around on the web and found some YouTube videos for G’MIC3 and we both thought one of them looked really cool (dream smoothing). So I did that for this week. I took my final image from week 3 and then followed along with the video, then I aggressively cropped my image and this is what I came up with:
Kind thoughts and comments are welcome!
Tutorial
Not much of a tutorial this week, basically I took my image from last week, then continuing in GIMP1, I ran three G’MIC3 filters and changed their blend modes and opacity. Check out this tutorial for more info…
Poll
Week four brings the end of this month’s one four challenge, and the comparison of what we’ve created throughout the month. Here’s a poll to determine which version you liked best this month. 🙂 (click to enlarge)
-
- Original After DarkTable
-
- Week 1 – Local Normalization
-
- Week 2 – Engrave
-
- Week 3 – Amped Up Colors
-
- Week 4 – Dream Smoothing
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.
Until next time…
~nic
P.S. Don’t forget November 30 there will not be a One Four Challenge entry, and December 7th we go back to Robyn’s site for a Review Month.
P.P.S. Thanks so much for making me feel welcome as the temp-host this month! 😀
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.
Photography by Nic 
Whoops – hit submit too quickly 🙂
https://norasphotos4u.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/one-four-challenge-november-2015-week-4/
Here is my post for week 4. Thanx so much Nic for keeping this challenge going for us!!
It was my pleasure, Nora! 😀 I’ll check out your image soon. 🙂
https://geriatrixfotogallerie.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/one-four-challenge-november-week-four/
I try to understand Gimp. When I see what you do with it, I wish I will succeed one day!
Thanks, Traudel, I’ve written a few tutorials, but most of them are intermediate…. check out Pat David’s tutorials, here, I learn so much from him and he has a few starting out tutorials that might answer your questions. Good Luck. 😀
Thanks a lot, I will have a look!
Gimp is a great program though I now use photoshop! Beautiful work Nic- I love the flow!
Thanks, Cybele! 😀 I was trained in Photoshop and Lightroom, I’ve switched to GIMP to make my tutorials more accessible to everyone.
🙂
Very nice, I like the slight oil paint effect – if you are a big fan of this style I recommend you try Topaz Impression – it has lots of various painterly effects that you can easily adjust and tweak easily.
Thanks, Stacey! 😀 I checked out Topaz Impression’s web page, it looks pretty neat, but unfortunately it doesn’t run on Linux, which is what I’m using.
Oh bummer! It is very neat.
It does look pretty cool 😀
At first the dream smoothing was my favorite, then I saw the black and white “Engrave”. That image sets the bar pretty high! It’s just great!
Thanks so much, Emilio! I spent a bit of time on the Engrave image, and I really liked the results too. 🙂
This is a nice painting effect. I think I would have to go with week 2 as my fave !!
Thanks, Nora! 🙂 I really like week 2 too! 😀
Wow, that’s amazing! Week four is definitely my favourite. You keep sharing new tutorials, which are so cool that I can’t wait to try out. 🙂 I hope I’ll have time for them soon. Thank you for hosting the challenge this month. It was nice of you.
Thanks, Agnes! 🙂 I’m so honored that Robyn asked me and so grateful that you all were so welcoming, it was my pleasure hosting this month. I do hope you get to try out some of my tutorials and let me know how it goes. 😀
Hi Nic, I voted for my favorite. Week 3.
Hee is my entry for this week.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/11/23/one-four-challenge-november-week-4/
Thanks, Cee! 🙂 Yes, being able to boost the colors was a great experiment, I’ll have to make sure I remember that trick in the future. 😀 I’ll go check out yours soon.
Thanks for hosting! And thanks for the tutorial…I love the wavy effects especially on the bird’s wings and body!
Thanks, Marsha! 🙂 Yeah, me too, I think that might be my favorite part, runner up is the red section on his neck 🙂
Fantastic edits all! I shall link mine tomorrow, when I am back in Delhi. I have been away so much that I have been following stuff very irregulalry.
I will come back and read your entries again. What are these filters you ran?
Thanks, Rajiv! 🙂 The filters are within the G’MIC Plug-in for GIMP, the are all under Artistic… Dream Smoothing (default settings, full opacity, bottom of the stack), Color Abstraction Paint (default settings, 40% opacity, middle of the stack), and Ellipsionism (default settings, 50% opacity, top of the stack). I hope that helps 🙂
Nice background colour, Nic. The wings of your humming bird are translucent. Beautiful!
Thanks, Chris! 😀 Why yes the wings are a bit translucent, I like the way the filter handled the little red bits of the feathers around his neck too 🙂
Good morning from me Nic 😃 Love your image this week – the light and colour. Wonderful. Once again, thanks so much for hosting.
Have a fab week to you and everyone😃😃
Thanks, Robyn, you are too kind! 😀