Theme - F/4

[Cheryl Slechta]

This is an image from a car show that I attended last year. I used several different apertures for the image and this was f/4. I'm not fond of the triangular part of the car in the lower right corner but I wanted to include everything on the left so I didn't have an option (that I could think of). I used Topaz Adjust to jazz it up a bit

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Cheryl,

Greetings. Interesting jazzing up (grunging?). The focus wanders a bit too much out of frame for my taste (the radiator on the left) with the back oof but holding a lot of interest. Thanks for posting. I do like the colors a lot.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Anita Bower]

A good example of creative use of dof. My eye goes right to the in focus area. The bright red and blue, and the texture helps focus my attention there also. I like all the different shapes.
Here is a reworked version with the lower right corner fixed and the radiator blurred. I used "skew" to pull the grey triangle mostly out of the image, and did a little cloning. I used Gaussian Blur to blur the radiator.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Thanks, Anita, for working on this - it addresses Michael's concerns too and I like it much better than the OP

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Anita, great repost... solves both lower corner issues and brings the subject into focus nicely.

Cheryl, does the original capture (I guess the engine itself) have the color as the OP does? It contains so many color contrast pairs red-blue, orange-blue, green-violet, cyan-magenta. Really pops the detail even in the oof areas.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Cheryl Slechta]

Here's the original jpg. I used Topaz Adjust Vivacious full strength, no tweaking.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Like Anita's repost Cheryl, and the processing gives it a grunge-hdr look.

[Nancy Bell]

Very interesting and I have to admit, I never look into a car engine and think potential art! Anita's stretching is a great solution. And that center hose with the red & blue makes a great focal point leading into the engine. Good eye to see an image in this.

[Dennis Bishop]

It appears that you were trying to isolate the red and blue fittings near the radiator and, without the use of a Lensbaby, the front of the radiator was in focus, too. I like Anita's approaches to making that hardware be the main focus () and getting rid of the triangle. Coincidentally, I was reading, earlier in the day, about the new blur filters that first appeared in Photoshop CS6. It sounds like they provide a good way to isolate focus regardless of the original depth of field.

[Randall Farhy]

Cheryl, the colors your brought out are pretty cool. I don't know if you were trying to emphasize the hose or not-here I took Anita's crop and applied a negative 30 (-30) pinch; yields an effect similar to that of spherize, without the hard surround.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to comment and especially to work on the image. I like each of them for varying reasons and will try out some of the techniques on some other car images that I've collected. In fact, there's a car show coming up soon.