Fooling Around with steamy pictures

[wm3798]

Not "steamy fooling around"... with pictures, sorry...

I'm trying to get my steam pictures to look a little more alive.  As has been discussed previously, I lack a decent photoshop tool, so I do the best I can with what I have to work with.  Here's what I've done so far, with thanks and apologies to Rail Pictures.net for a few plume samples...


This was the first one I did.  I'm not happy with the color, or the transition between the sample and the original, however, the steam and smoke in the original image was against a wooded hillside, as is my background, and I think there's a reasonable degree of transparency achieved.  If I A) started with a full size image to tinker with, then shrink it down to tighten everything up, and B) adjusted the color of the original photo to match the black/white original shot, I think it would work a lot better.  The composition, though, I think is perfect!


On this one, I added a shadow on the building, and worked on the color and edges of the steam plume a little more.  I enlarged the steam plume 300% to work on the edges with the spray can tool, which seems to have helped a bit.  Still not where I'd like it.  The shadow on the building works marginally well, I think.  Any thoughts on that?


This is the last one, which I think turned out the best.  On this one, I started with a full size base image, and also enlarged the steam plume.  I merged the two images in full size, then resized them to 800 px for web display.  Tightened up pretty nicely, but there's still too many pixels visible from the spray can tool.  I used to have Microsoft Photo Editor, which had a smudge tool, which is really what I need.  But it went away two computers ago.  I think I still have the disc with the program on it, but that Windows 95, and I doubt it will work on XP. (since hardly anything else does!)

Anyway.  These are experimental and for comment and suggestion.  If one of you with Photo Shop wants to mess around with further cleaning them up, I'd be much obliged.

Lee

[ljudice]

Lee - have you downloaded GIMP?  It is free, open source and is almost, if not even more powerful than Photoshop.

Lou

[up1950s]

Like the second shot very much .

In that first shot they must have been burning blue coal .

[wm3798]

Downloaded GIMP, (plus a bunch of other useless crap...oh well...) but I'm already diggin' the results...



Much better.  Now I have yet another means of wasting a colossal amount of time in the den!

Lee

[3rdrail]

Lee, what did your hostler put in the sand dome to make it steam like that?  ;D ;D ;D

The steam should be coming from the pop valves, behind the steam dome (the one with the whistle on it.)

[wm3798]

I knew that... It's just that the picture I lifted the steam from had the steam dome in front!  Now that I have a decent editing tool, I'll be able to mess around with it and fix things like that.

The fireman's going to be in trouble with the road foreman, too... all that coal going up the flue instead into tractive effort~!

Lee

[ñiao]

Dang, when I read "steamy pictures", I first thought ...
The last one is the best! Good job!

GIMP is cool! I have been using it for years.

[ljudice]

Glad to hear you like GIMP - yes, you will be wasting a LOT of time, but at least you won't be spending a LOT of money to do it!   ;D

[CoalPorter]

My first thought was "atomic mushroom clouds" . (no offense)

[Bob Bufkin]

I think the 3rd photo is the best.  The steam in the first photo looks too fake somehow.  The smoke in the 2nd is great but the shadows caused on the brick building in the back looks way off somehow.

[wm3798]

First shot re-edited

[ñiao]

You might want to give some blur to the parts where the tree look through the steam.

[Guilford Guy]

Looking great! You might also want to try adding "motion" by blurry the drive rods and drivers. The smoke implies that its moving at a good pace, but the drivers say otherwise.

[Puddington]

Lee's done some nice work - I've shyed away from using "actual smoke" as I find it's easier to create it in photoshop using dodge; burn; smear and blur tools....























Sometimes it works better than other but overall I like the effect.