Nickynak Feedback

[Azriel]

I took some pics of this little hand painted nick nack. Only one of them was worthy of my flikr account and I was curious if I could get some feedback. I feel the shot has good comp, but it doesn't quite pop. I have photoshop but have used it for all of five minutes, so if someone wants to edit my shot, I encourage it....just tell me what you did and how.

 

[LaFoto]

At 500x333, it is tiny and will make editing it a tad difficult.
All in all I feel it is too warm (colour temperaturewise) - it was taken in lamp light, I assume, and despite the WB of the camera being set to tungsten, it still came out too warm. It also looks quite underexposed.

I took two steps in my ancient old PS to bring about some change, first I changed the colour balance in order to "cool down" the colours some...

... and then I looked a the levels only to find that there were hardly any highlights at all, which I then upped...

... to end with this as my final result of a 30-second adjustment (I never spend ages on photos in Photoshop, for if they require too much "fixing", then something had gone wrong from the start).

 

[Azriel]

Thank you so much! That's really helpful. I was trying to come up with a word for what was wrong with it but couldn't. Is there any other advice you can give on this shot?