Sometime in late November, I promised that ten of you would win in my Photoshop Forensics in France image-sleuthing contest. And now, some 19 days later (time is an illusion, people!), I finally come through. Here’s a graphic that explains one of the image manipulations (seamingly subtle but actually huge):

First, let me say, there’s going to be an even bigger Photoshop Top 40-themed contest under works this week. Second, here are the ten winners—listed by user name (so hopefully you know who you are—with brief explanations as to why they won.

These first nine folks win a one-week free pass at lynda.com. (Yes, you can get a week free by going to lynda.com/deke, but that’s just for first-time subscribers. These passes should work whether you’ve subscribed before or not.) Just fire us an email to quiz@deke.com and we’ll fire you back the necessary details. That said, here are the winners:

mustafaquilon: Yes indeed, the “Riding in Camargue” image was shot with a Fuji FinePix E900. Said so in the metadata. And, yes, “Arles’ Coliseum” is one of the two Photomerge images. It comprises 11 vertically oriented photographs, all of which I shot with an Olympus E-30.

Vectorgeek: “Théâtre Antique d’Orange” is the other Photomerge image. It includes a total of 14 photographs, again vertical and captured with my E-30. I also added an image of me (that tiny figure in the center), which was shot by a friend with a different camera (the Fuji).

Deverill: For “Stage Wall With Augustus” you guessed that in Camera Raw, Recovery was cranked up more than Fill Light, and you’re right—100 for Recovery and 80 for Fill Light. I also took Contrast up to +65. You also guessed “crop and resize unless you had a bucket truck or a very tall ladder,” which is funny. But while I did crop (the original was vertical), I was shooting from high in the bleachers. Also selected the midtones and set to Soft Light to bring out the details.

Biggervern: You guessed a whole lotta stuff on “Théâtre Antique d’Orange,” some accurate. In Photomerge, I set the Layout to Cylindrical, which made the stitched composite appear convex (so no need for Spherize). And no special enhancements to the sky. But I did something of a double fake-HDR on this one, applying Recovery and Fill Light to the original images and then adding a Shadows/Highlights smart filter to the stitched composite. And I sharpened using Smart Sharpen. (Regarding your question, you see the metadata by opening the high-res image in Photoshop and choosing File > File Info. However, the Save for Web command wiped out the EXIF data.)

cicada: Yes, I rotated “Théâtre Antique D’Arles” a half a degree, but as a smart object using Edit > Free Transform with the help of a horizontal guideline. And I set the Temperature in Camera Raw to 5800, which warmed up the image. (I’m partial to warm images.) But the most significant alteration to this image was the radical streitching on the right-hand side of the image, performed using Edit > Transform > Warp. I avoided the “ripped pixel” effect by downsampling.

BRB: If “Truly It Refreshes” possesses a “full and smooth” histogram, it’s thanks mostly to downsampling. But I also corrected what was originally a blown-out JPEG image using Shadows/Highlights and Levels in Lab. The jacket/road intersection appears exactly as shot. But I’ll give you partial credit because I healed a mark on a brick on the far left side of the image.

jbird: Wow, your values for “Riding in Camargue” are so specific that I wondered if you located a stream of metadata I didn’t know about. But as mad guesses go, not too bad. I did indeed take the JPEG image into Camera Raw. Real values: Temp +5, Recovery 50, Fill Light 40, Blacks 5, Brightness -50, Clarity 0, Vibrance +30, Saturation 0. The shadows were noisy, so I aplied Smart Sharpen to just the highlights and midtones.

CarminaOne: “Buried Cities of Glanum” is one of my favorites (the original was drab and dull), so nice choice and nice guesses. In Camera Raw, I cranked Recovery (80) and Fill Light (50), and took the Blacks up to 25. I also raged on the Temperature (8450) and Vibrance (+65) values. (Good call on the chromatic aberrations; kinda ignored those.) Also did some Luminance work in the HSL/Grayscale panel. No additional columns or vignettes (all real), but I used Edit > Transform > Warp to fit the image inside the panoramic frame.

AlanGilbertson: You chose “Les Baux-de-Provence,” and again you caught me not correcting the chromatic aberration. (I guess I skipped that lesson! :) In Camera Raw, I took Fill Light to 50, Vibrance to +65. Excellent call on the use of the graduated filter tool! Plus some Saturation and Luminance work in the HSL/Grayscale panel. The halos are the result of Smart Sharpen (no mask). And the distortion, which you quite rightly recognized, is the result of a Spherize smart filter set to -50 and Horizontal Only. FWIW, I recently wrote this image up for a future “Deke Space” column in Photoshop User magazine.

And now for the grand prize winner, who in addition to a free week at lynda.com will receive copies of my recent One-on-One books, all three of them, for CS4! So when you email quiz@deke.com, make sure to give us a shipping address.

Fangoriously! You correctly identified “Au Revior Mes Amis” as the one image to which I applied the healing brush. (Which figures, given that it’s a close-up of me, and I’m exceedingly vain.) The image at the outset of this article compares the original me to the edited one—at low res. Sorry, no high res of unedited me. I made the skin sepia using a Gradient Map layer (with reduced Opacity) and masked out the flower using both the pen and brush tools. I dodged my eyes fairly generously. The one layer you missed was the iris of my right eye—it was too far to the left, making me look cross-eyed, so I moved it.

For those who may be curious, I offered a couple of hints at the end of the contest post that received wrong guesses, so I figured I should clear up: The element to which I added a slender shadow was the sundial in “La Pyramide, Saint-Rémy.” The one upsampled image was “Église St-Trophime, Arles” (with the frieze of the damned marching to Hell), which I enlarged to 132 percent of its original size.

Congrats to all, and thanks for playing!