Hi, A big thank you to all who took part in our previous 'Finest Cut' challenge. Who would have thought that so many ideas could start with a pizza cutter. This week we start outdoors. This is the Saltburn Cliff Lift which is a funicular railway on leading down to the promenade and pier, in Saltburn on the north east coast of England. Constructed in the 1880s, it has been updated several times, but is still powered by water. The tank underneath the upper car is filled with water and when it is heavier than the car at the bottom it descends and pulls the lower car up, all controlled by the brakeman in the wheelhouse. At the bottom the tank empties and the upper car is filled. The water is pumped back to the top.So that is the scene - what can you do to bring it to life? When you post your response can you add just a few words on how you went about it. It may help others see the potential of different approaches, software, and tools to such a challenge. The “rules”: Use the starter image as at least part of your own image entry. Anything goes, as long as it meets the forum rules on decency, copyright, etc. Anyone, and everyone, is welcome to have a go, whether you are a complete beginner or a Photoshop expert. This is not just for our forum “regulars”. The challenge is not limited to Photoshop. Any Adobe software can be used. There are no prizes apart from the chance to practice, show off your skills, or bring a bit of humor and fun. Don't be shy, join in and have a go! The starter image is made available for you to use in this forum challenge only. To download the starter image, hover over the image and click on the circle with the arrows at the top right. Then, when the image opens in its own window, right click and choose “Save Image As/Save Target As” (or similar depending on your browser). When posting back your image — please use the blue reply button in this first post and use the 'Insert Photos' icon at the top of the reply box. If posting a comment on someone else’s entry, then please use the grey reply button next to their image post. Have fun! Dave

davescm

Community Expert

Question

Something for the Weekend - Part 248 - What goes up...

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
August 29, 2025
28 replies
3597 views

Hi,

A big thank you to all who took part in our previous 'Finest Cut' challenge. Who would have thought that so many ideas could start with a pizza cutter.

This week we start outdoors. This is the Saltburn Cliff Lift which is a funicular railway on leading down to the promenade and pier, in Saltburn on the north east coast of England. Constructed in the 1880s, it has been updated several times, but is still powered by water. The tank underneath the upper car is filled with water and when it is heavier than the car at the bottom it descends and pulls the lower car up, all controlled by the brakeman in the wheelhouse. At the bottom the tank empties and the upper car is filled. The water is pumped back to the top.

So that is the scene - what can you do to bring it to life?

When you post your response can you add just a few words on how you went about it. It may help others see the potential of different approaches, software, and tools to such a challenge.

The “rules”:

Use the starter image as at least part of your own image entry.
Anything goes, as long as it meets the forum rules on decency, copyright, etc.
Anyone, and everyone, is welcome to have a go, whether you are a complete beginner or a Photoshop expert. This is not just for our forum “regulars”.
The challenge is not limited to Photoshop. Any Adobe software can be used.
There are no prizes apart from the chance to practice, show off your skills, or bring a bit of humor and fun. Don't be shy, join in and have a go!
The starter image is made available for you to use in this forum challenge only.

To download the starter image, hover over the image and click on the circle with the arrows at the top right. Then, when the image opens in its own window, right click and choose “Save Image As/Save Target As” (or similar depending on your browser).

When posting back your image — please use the blue reply button in this first post and use the 'Insert Photos' icon at the top of the reply box. If posting a comment on someone else’s entry, then please use the grey reply button next to their image post.

Have fun!

Dave

Show previous replies

daniellei4510

Community Expert

In operation 24/7, 356 days a year.

Adobe Community Expert | If you can't fix it, hide it; if you can't hide it, delete it.

D

DeanUtian

Community Expert

Nice work 🙂

Christelle RD

Community Expert

I experimented something here ...

davescm

Author

Community Expert

It could be a bad dream with those carriages stretching out toward you! 🙂 You've done a great job with the seamless stretches.
Dave

@mj

Community Expert

Tx as always Dave. Great fun!

davescm

Author

Community Expert

They'll be off to wax their moustaches soon. 🙂
Dave

N

Nick Gioia

Community Expert

davescm

Author

Community Expert

They'll have to fill the water tanks with tea, Nick. 🙂
Dave

davescm

Author

Community Expert

On a serious note, given the subject of this challenge, my thoughts go to those in Lisbon involved in yesterday's funicular crash, along with their families. Very sad.

Dave

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

We had eight hours in Lisbon on our way home from Spain (Santiago de Compostela) two weeks ago. We planed to go into the city but the luggage lockers were all taken, so we had a boring wait at the airport. The friends we were with had already spent a few days in Lisbon, on their way to Porto (where we met them) and had been on the funicular. As you can imagine, we talked about it on the phone last night, and they said they'd been crammed packed in, and that there were way more than forty people in it. We now know that the cable linking the two cars snapped, and that the Gloria car was very near the top of the 265M slope, so had all that distance to pick up speed.

It is sad that this weeks SFTW subject happened to be a funicula, and I feel sure people will now be thinking twice before using the Saltburn lift. As Dave has said, we will be thinking of the people who died, and those who were seriously injured. I am not sure that I can add more images to this thread.

Turtle.PSD

Participating Frequently

Very limitedly portable steampunk tiny homes are the future. They offer all the excitement of moving with the stability of keeping the same neighbors and mailbox.

I turned them into Steampunk tiny homes in Firefly using Gemini and prompted it to do things like add the lightning, make it look more distopian and increase the highlights. Then I ran it through CR and painted with some Curves adjustment layers near the lights.
Then I animated it in "Create Video Timeline" in PS's Timeline Window by staggering/fading the layers to make it a little more interesting/show the difference.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Very impressive. I was obsessing with Gemini 2.5 Flash, Nano Banana, KlingAi etc. most of yesterday, and it leaves the Firefly engine for dead. Did you do this directly in https://gemini.google.com/app or another site that uses the G2.5 model?

I found a hack opening LMArena.ai in an Incognito browser window. It gives you a bunch of generations, and when it stops working, open a new Incognito window. The UI has already changed from the six day old video that I found the hack on, so that might not last. Things are moving so quickly right now, and with Firefly offering the G2.5 model, and others, as an option, I feel sure we are soon going to see some changes to the Adobe and Photoshop tools.

One of the big advantages with G2.5 and Nano Banana is that we don't need to make a selection. Just describe what you want to edit with the text prompt. for instance:

I opened LMArina.ai.

Wait for it to check you are human and not a bot.

Click on the image tab, and I pasted this complex shape directly into the text prompt window.

I told it to: 'Apply realistic shading to this shape, and colour it red. The light is coming from the top right corner.'

The image I started with was about 500 pixels wide, so I upsized it just using Photoshop Image Size, so the result is pretty rough. It sharpened it up and did a decent job of the shading. Imagine how long it would take to select every fasset doing this manually in Photoshop?

@Turtle.PSD How did you animate this and output as a GIF? Or did you create a video and change it to a gif in Photoshop?

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Just to show that Photoshop isa not dead, Camera RAW and our Noel's Starfilter Pro 4

Although I could have asked the Ai to 'Increase contrast and color saturation, and add some highlights to the tip of the brighter points' I think I like the Photoshop version better. (In case I have confused anyone, the image below is the Ai edit. ) My LMArena window had timed out (about ten minutes) and I had to open a new one.

G

Gord@APL

Inspiring

Attempting to channel the Reverand Awdry...

davescm

Author

Community Expert

Ah, they must be friends of Thomas then. I like the expressions. 🙂
Dave

War Unicorn

Community Expert

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Any Genesis fans here? This one reminds me of this track from Wind and Wuthering.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

This took two mninutes with Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash. Apprently Firefly is now offering the Google model, which means we can use our Gen Creds (the Nano Banana image generator/editor is not free). I am a long way from working it out, but YouTube is full of videos about it. https://gemini.google.com/

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I promise I am not going to rely on this Ai going forward, but for now, it is so much fun, and AFAICT no Generative Credits were involved. Ged is going to have a wonderful time with his imagination.

AlanGilbertson

Community Expert

Gemini 2.5 Flash was free until 1 September (which is a holiday in the US). After that it will use GenAI credits, like Firefly Model 4 Ultra or the FLUX, GPT Image, and Imagen models. In the announcement on the Adobe blog Hannah Elsakr wrote, "For a limited time, Adobe Firefly will offer paid customers unlimited generations with Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. The offer is available through September 1 for Adobe Firefly and Creative Cloud Pro paid members — including up to 20 generations for new customers on Firefly's free plan."

JR Boulay

Community Expert

I saw the same ones near Kyiv.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

davescm

Author

Community Expert

Suitably recoloured cars, JR. 🙂
Dave

JR Boulay

Community Expert

Suitably recoloured cars, JR

The most difficult part was the terminal at the top.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded