More plant life

[CAG76]

Here we go Paulpippin29. This may give you some idea. Now here's one thing. I really believe photography is what you want it to be. Everyone has their preferences. My eyes tend to like the richness of colors. When colors are rich, they pop! But not too much. Here is something I did to your last image.

Now it will look a lot better with your larger images that you have. I understand making it smaller for myspace so you just posted it straight from there. I use photobucket. For some reason photobucket and flickr seem to keep the sharpness. That's how my images turn out so sharp on here.

Somewhere on this site there are instructions on how to post from these two sites.

-Christopher

 

[CAG76]

lol Now that I post it, it doesn't look much different. I couldn't make it as dark as I usually make mine because of how low res the image is, the pixels were starting to change strange colors. I sharped it a little, but not too much I could do.

-Christopher

 

[paulpippin29]

Wow.... I can see the additional sharpness there. Thing is, if I were to load this image up in PS again, and added more sharpness, it would instantly make the image look harsh, but perhaps it's because I would be attempting to sharpen the entire image? Maybe I should in cases like these, select just a portion of the subject and sharpen it rather than the entire image?

 

[CAG76]

Try it. For some reason I'm not getting a harsh sharpness. Just enough.

 

[paulpippin29]

Yep, just tried it. Had to select the center of the flower, and sharpen it only. If I sharpened the entire image, it caused alot of unwanted noise.

However, sharpening just the center helped it out alot, and I also added a couple of adjustment layers... one for contrast, the other for saturation, just to see how it would look, and it was an improvment as well.

 

[CAG76]

Wow! You should try reposting it! I'd like to see what you've done!

 

[paulpippin29]

Ok, here it is:

Sharpened the center of the flower only...
Added one contrast adjustment layer, boosted it to 20
Added one saturation adjustment layer, boosted it to 20 also

An imrpovment I suppose? I should have kept the original's from this batch, could have more fun.

 

[CAG76]

Looks good! That's the beauty about Raw images. You can do so much with those! Someone else it his forum might be able to better explain exactly what a raw image is, but I love them because it's like you take the picture in the, well, obviously rawest form, and you can go into your photo software and change options to produce the best looking photo possible.

-Christopher

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

My simple understanding of RAW images, is they are uncompressed. This gives you much more information to work with when tweaking these large files.

 

[paulpippin29]

Absolutely, RAW is all I ever shoot, wouldn't have it any other way. That is particularly why I stated that I wish I had the original RAW format of this image, along with all my others. I have a horrible habit of becoming satisfied, converting, then saving, then doing away with the RAW's. I have a huge hardrive with tons of available space, can't for the life of me figure out why I don't just keep them!

 

[CAG76]

Bitter Jeweler, you said it right there. Best way to explain RAW images simply.

Paulpippin, that is my problem too. I don't keep my raw files. I do what I want with them, then I convert them to tiffs but I have large tiff files that have been manipulated to what I feel is perfection and keep that tiff file. I will convert to a lower res jpg form and put in another folder for posting on the web.

-Christopher

 

[paulpippin29]

Hey, I took some more photo's today, while it was cloudy, dreary, and had just finished raining, but I thought about posting a few in here. If you'de like to keep going with this thread, let me know, and up they'll go

 

[CAG76]

OH yes please do! Would love to see them!

Hey! Do you have a flickr page? I thought I saw and added you on there. It appears I saw your same name on there.

 

[paulpippin29]

Yep, have a Flickr, used it only once though to upload some photo's of a "model" that I took, mainly so that she'd have access to them at all times. I maxed it out too! Ya know, that whole "200" limit rule?

Welp, off to Photobucket I go, gonna upload a few, then post them here, be back shortly

 

[paulpippin29]

Ok, here we go...

As stated, these were taken under a terribly dreary sky, it had literally, just stopped raining, and I was working with natural light only, no flash. I did have the camera set to "spot metering" for these, as I was really eager to try it out, and am pleased with the lighting more than I usually am, though it still could be better. Maybe next time, I'll actually use the flash, who knows.

Also, they were loaded into DPP FIRST, where I changed the white balance (which I forgot to change on the camera) to "SHADE"... I then brightened them up just a tad (which caused a tad bit of noise in these for some reason, only visible on the large res shots though), and then finally, I sharpened them all up to the maximum allowed by DPP, which is "10".

Afterwards, I loaded them into PSE 7, applied the contrast and saturation adjustment layers, and then used the "Auto Sharpen" feature on them all, and these are the sharpest I've come up with yet. I think the key was that I was NOT sharpening in DPP, never have before today, and was always relying on PSE's sharpening, which worked, but as you pointed out, wasn't sharp enough. DPP's sharpening seems to be completely harmless almost, and of course, it's sharpening a RAW image, versus a JPG, or other type, so using BOTH to sharpen seems to be better. I will from now on, continue to use DPP's sharpening effect, along with PSE's as well.

I did resize them again, down to the "Myspace" resolution, so that I could post them there as well, as again, that's where ALL of my photo's are at... however, this time, they were uploaded to Photobucket FIRST, and are coming from there only.

Hope you like them, they're all of the same flower, except for the one that hasn't sprouted out yet