I have a relatively boring photo of a barn door. There is one detail on it though. There are initials carved into it CJ+RP. Well CJ and RP are engaged. I was thinking of printing and framing the photo to give it as a gift. However I am a little concerned that the photo is too boring.

I am wondering what you guys think? Can I PP it to give it some pop? I was thinking of framing with a mat in a complementary color. Any ideas?

 

You have the RAW image? I would mess with the Vibrance, Sat, Recovery, Blacks, Clarity and Contrast.

This is just messing with your jpeg quickly, so many ways to go.

 

and then play with the shadows, highlights, burn tool, curves and blending options.

i have a similar image and my end result after playing w/ it for a lil bit was wanting to make it more grungy and worn...i think yours would look great with the same effect...plus yours has more details to it...

 

Overall, the image needs a levels adjustment. After that, you've got pretty rich colors and a boatload of texture detail in there to play with so there's a ton of different things you could probably pull off with this image.

The possibility that popped into my head would be to do one type of processing/technique that mutes or softens the wall and leave just the area of their initials unprocessed or processed in the "opposite" fashion. You'd need to be comfy in the land of layers and layer masks though.

 

HDR?

Also, in Jups work, it looks like EJ and RP.

 

How about desaturating all the vertical slats except for the one with the initials? I like jup's suggestion of upping the vibrance/sat, though. Perhaps a combination of both.

 

Negative image?

IR Filter?

 

Oh you can get all sorts of nuts with that image in lightroom. The information is all there if you shot RAW.

Have some fun!

 

One additional thought. I don't know if the roof line even really needs to be in the image. I assume CJ & RP are going to remember the exact barn door this is as soon as they see it. I don't think the visual clue of the roof line saying "hey, this is a barn" is really necessary. Having just the pattern of the boards and their textures in the image will create more of an artistic feel.

 

You can mess with cropping, contrast, saturation, vignetting.

The possibilities are endless.

 

Thanks for all the great ideas guys !!

 

Did a quick sample... I kinda like it. I am gonna keep playing with it and try a bunch of things. As has been said, with the raw the possibilities are limitless.

 

Yeah, fixed in my quick sample.

 

That's pretty good, but adjust the hell out of the color image first, then the black and white will stand out more, as well as the colored plank.

 

I agree - more POP!! I think it's a great gift.

 

Here are a few I did with the JPEG that can give you a few ideas:

Next is the basic Desaturate with more of a color pop and some "aging"


Next is a soft focus effect with the picture in color with the highlight being the CJ+RP.


This photo I cropped because the engraving in the center appears odd, I put it off center so the eye focuses on the whole picture rather than jumping to the center.


Same here, just the whole photo in Color with Soft Focus:


And Last the desaturated one of the above version:

 

Personally, I think losing detail on that awesome wood texture is not the way to go.

 

I agree with einsatz. The texture makes the photo. Here's my little interpretation.

 

My take:

 

wnderlst's is very much my taste and style. here is my quickie:

 

My take. Needs some further tweaking though.

 

+1 on wndrlst style/PP, and sarlacc's crop

definitely bring out the grain and as Billiam said, the roof isn't really adding anything to the picture.

and overall i think it's an AWESOME gift! how long ago did they carve their initials in the wood?

 

WHat kills me is that carving dead center of the frame, it draws your eye to it every time.

 

I don't see that as a problem in this case, considering the story behind the shot. Afterall, isn't the photo about CJ & RP (and not the barn, wood, or texture)?

 

I actually do find the carving in the middle a little distracting. I don't want to change the photo too much to keep it real. It is incidentally done by a cousin of CJ. The farm belongs to CJ's family. The carving was done no more than a few years ago judging by how weathered it is

I am digging wndrlst's pp and think I will crop out the roofline in the final.
Thanks all.

 

I like the roofline, it gives a spacial sense to the photo and allows one to identify that it's indeed the side of a building. On the ones where it' cropped out it feels less unique.

 

These two were my attempt to make it pop a little more:

 

The first one of those two is great!

 

Thanks for all the help folks. I spent a bit of time processing and came up with this. I am going to send this one to print. Hopefully it works ok. I decided not to change too much of the image as I think the color and texture are important components of the barn and I want to preserve that. I did some minor ps work to tone down the crosshairs and 'robs' graffiti, and cropped to move it from dead centre. I also keystoned it a bit to straighten the boards at the edges.



This is my first time enlarging and printing. I am a little nervous dropping the $$ not having any experience.