Every Friday I try to post my After Before Forum entry, a weekly challenge hosted by Stacy Fischer on her blog Visual Venturing.
In the wake of last week’s failed experiment, I decided to put a little bit more effort to this week’s entry.
I took this photo last year in Monte Carlo. Loved that big boat with those beautiful sails, but couldn’t get the clear image without those awful yachts (I mean, who buys a “golden” yacht???).
So, I first cropped the image, which gave me a good starting point.
The biggest things was to replace the docking area with the sea. It took me few hours playing with Gimp and I must admit it was a test of my patience replacing all that area around the boat. I don’t know if it is easier in some other program, but it was a long process, especially when I came close to the boat.
When I finished the image, I still didn’t quite like it, because it was too grainy. So, I soften the image a little bit, lost some details, but camouflaged all the grainy area, especially the sails.
Here it is, the “after” image. It took me some time to get to it, but I think it was worth it. And it pushed me to start learning how to use Gimp.
Please, check Stacy’s blog for other wonderful entries.
Snow's Fissures and Fractures 
Nice work in the removal of the harbor. I have gimp but only for some plugins that are no longer compatible with Photoshop. I would say replacing that area in Photoshop and even adding some sea to the foreground would have been a bit easier than in Gimp.
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Not at all… Gimp is enough poweful to do this. But you can’t judge a tool that you didn’t actually learned.
GIMP’s reputation is often sullied by people that don’t want to take time to learn it.
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I was not saying that gimps is not powerfull enough to do this, but with the content aware options would have made the process easier.
You are right I never fully learned gimp not because I didnt want to spend the time. It was because I have never had a need to, from high school onwards I have always had photoshop.
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Thank you, it was a lengthy process, but I suspect it is not Gimp’s fault. 😀
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Nicely done. I’m not familiar with Gimp, so have no basis to compare with other approaches. However, I do like the dreamy look of the final image very much.
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Thank you, Robin. I too like the final image, it looks like it came out of Neverland. 😀
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The original is good and the final edited photo is also good. Liked the softness and glow in the photo.
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Tnx, Norma. I particularly like how the after and before look so different. It was worth the time and effort.
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I agree. 😉 It is always amazing to see the difference after the final processing.
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Love it, now we can see all the detail on the boat. Great job!
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Thank you, I am very satisfied how it turned out.
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The last step in your edition process added a wonderful phantom aspect to the ship, and a mystic mood to the whole image; I really like it Loré!
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Thank you so much. I just felt it needed something more and that last touch was it. Must admit I am still a little bit surprised I managed to do all that. 😀
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Well, I am totally impressed by your perseverance in replacing that ocean, Loré! I’ve never used Gimp before, but you certainly used it in a very powerful way. And I, too, thought of Neverland when I saw your final image. I was expecting to see Peter Pan peering out from behind one of those beautiful sails 🙂 Nicely done. Thanks for sharing this on ABFriday!
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Thank you so much for your kind words, Stacy!
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I have never tried GIMP. I downloaded it once but soon after had a virus and thought GIMP was the culprit so I removed it. Still don’t know what was the cause but I’m happy to see you had no such problem. This is beautiful! I love the soft effect you used to camouflage the grain. I’ve tried doing that a few times in Lightroom but it doesn’t work as well. I just can’t say enough about this edit. My wife saw me playing with dropping in a cloudy sky to a photo I had and said the amount of work was tedious and not worth it. What she didn’t realize is that when you are doing something that is fun, it’s not as tedious as it might appear. I’m glad you took the time to get rid of the dock. What a beautiful ship! A beautiful shot!
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Thank you so much for all the kind words. It was worth the effort and I am very satisfied with the final image. I forgot to mention in my post, the last soft effect was added in PicMonkey. I usually combine few different programs in post-processing to get the desired effect. There is so much to learn about GIMP, I just scratched the surface.
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