OLD BARN № 054 - revisited with realizations

by @thekittygirl · 0 votes · 0.000 HBD

<div class="text-justify">It is hard to believe that it has been almost five years since I posted the most recent of my old barn photos — <a href="https://peakd.com/hive-123585/@thekittygirl/old-barn-095">"OLD BARN № 095"</a> — out of my series of 300+ photos. If I'm going to get them all posted, I suppose I should get them rolling again sometime soon. What made me think of my Old Barn Project again was my recent discovery that AI could greatly assist in removing unsightly <a href="https://peakd.com/hive-124452/@thekittygirl/utility-lines">utility lines</a> from photos. Please read onward to see how it evolved. So many of my photos of old barns have something obscuring the view — utility lines, utility poles, tree limbs, roadside weeds, and so forth. Also, some of the barns I've photographed were in fields a good distance from the road and became a bit grainy when I zoomed-in for the shot. I do not have a fancy camera and telephoto lens, only my cellphone. Besides the cost, I don't want to be burdened with an extra bag when I leave the house, simply for those occasional "Oh, there's another barn!" moments. Additionally, the ambient lighting wasn't always great at the time of the shots, and some barns even had undesirable lighting on subsequent visits at different times of day. I learned from simple trial-and-error that overcast days seemed to have the best lighting, but revisiting the barns on overcast days wasn't always possible. So, I have done quite a lot of editing to make the photos presentable and interesting. One of the tools many people use to enhance photos are filters. Professional photographers often have a set of physical filters they can attach to the camera to achieve certain effects. Others, who process their own film, can achieve special effects through the way they develop the film in the darkroom. Effects can also be applied digitally, with PaintShopPro™, PhotoShop™, Canva™, and other software. As one simple example, there is a filter called "70s" which can make the photo look like a shot that was taken during the 1970s era, 50 years ago. It simply works by slightly changing the "color map" of the photo to mute the colors, giving the image a "vintage" look. Notice in the photo pair, below, how the 70s filter makes the photo look like it was taken long ago, with inferior camera, or the photo was stuffed in a drawer and yellowed over time. <div class="pull-left"><img src="https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/thekittygirl/244e89bBqjypn2bMnk8oP3tLFhtKv5MkhtdwrtoeXmxw4o6PShSRB8ix68avTwHvF11KV.png"><center>barn photo: original</center></div><div class="pull-right"><img src="https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/thekittygirl/23zS7Kgr8U4DKyUZGbR58FNi8NDnS1Dy3qzufcznBXJQFhmtKpLDEkFR8PpnedyWpABQV.png"><center>barn photo: with "70s" filter applied</center></div> There are several other filters which are common, such as C41 (which makes the image look like it was taken with a film camera and processed with Kodak's C-41 chromogenic processing protocol) [1], CP (Cross-Processing, which makes the image appear as if it were shot on one type of film but processed with a different protocol) [2], IF (Intensify Filter, which intensifies colors by changing saturation & contrast), and many other filtering techniques. Besides filters, one can also enhance photos via individual adjustments to brightness, contrast, saturation, color map, etc. In my search for filtering effects to make my old barn photos look better, I stumbled across one website which had some AI-enhancements. However, I did not want to use those AI-enhancements because I wanted my photo editing to have a more "human" touch. There's a certain element of pride in creative processes, when someone can say, "I did this, all by myself!" and that's what I wanted to be able to sa […]