And it was all yellow...

[SquarePeg]

DSC_5013_2747a by SharonCat..., on Flickr

Comments and critique always welcome. Thanks for looking!

 

[Ysarex]

Nice, I'd lose the basket handle.

Joe

 

[SquarePeg]

Nice, I'd lose the basket handle.

Joe

Thanks for your feedback! I really like the basket handle - both the height and the look that it gives the photo. Without it, it's just not what I envisioned.

 

[Tim Tucker]

This is just my perception and the way I'd do it and offered as different rather than correct.

Yellow is quite a bright colour, and it is brightest with the pastels intact (colour with white). I aways resist the urge to add contrast or clarity as this just increases the levels of black in the colour. Saturation slowly strips the pastels and white out so again dulls the colour in the end.

Below are two copies of you image, one I've edited and one I've just cropped. Open them in separate tabs and flick between them (without the distraction of different crops) you'll see the differences far clearer.

I'd not only keep the yellows brighter but I'd also try not to flatten the values in the image so much. By this I mean raising shadows and dropping highlights so all your colours and tones show a similar range of values. I've not really changed the tonal range in my edit or the distribution by much at all. But I have made the contrasts more local rather than global. There's a variation in local contrast between bright and shaded areas, the bright areas don't have such dark tones and the shadowed areas don't have such bright tones. With your edit they are more even and the effect is to reduce the impression of light and depth in the image. Flick between the images in separate tabs to see what I mean.

With the background I've kept it a little less neutral with a trace of blue as this sets off the yellow a little better.

With the crop I think you have far too much space to the left and below. This pushes the main bulk of your image up and to the right. The main point for balance is not the centre of the flowers but a point in the flowers slightly to the right of that. The pattern of the background doesn't really change as there's still enough of it there, I've just removed a little of the repetition. Yellow as a colour carries a lot of weight so you really have to use your eye to judge it. Flick between my edit and your original un-cropped to see the difference.

I hope the above is helpful.

My edit:

Your original cropped:

 

[Didereaux]

Tims cropping is the key. The originals had too much basket below the flowers.

 

[SquarePeg]

This is just my perception and the way I'd do it and offered as different rather than correct.

Yellow is quite a bright colour, and it is brightest with the pastels intact (colour with white). I aways resist the urge to add contrast or clarity as this just increases the levels of black in the colour. Saturation slowly strips the pastels and white out so again dulls the colour in the end.

Below are two copies of you image, one I've edited and one I've just cropped. Open them in separate tabs and flick between them (without the distraction of different crops) you'll see the differences far clearer.

I'd not only keep the yellows brighter but I'd also try not to flatten the values in the image so much. By this I mean raising shadows and dropping highlights so all your colours and tones show a similar range of values. I've not really changed the tonal range in my edit or the distribution by much at all. But I have made the contrasts more local rather than global. There's a variation in local contrast between bright and shaded areas, the bright areas don't have such dark tones and the shadowed areas don't have such bright tones. With your edit they are more even and the effect is to reduce the impression of light and depth in the image. Flick between the images in separate tabs to see what I mean.

With the background I've kept it a little less neutral with a trace of blue as this sets off the yellow a little better.

With the crop I think you have far too much space to the left and below. This pushes the main bulk of your image up and to the right. The main point for balance is not the centre of the flowers but a point in the flowers slightly to the right of that. The pattern of the background doesn't really change as there's still enough of it there, I've just removed a little of the repetition. Yellow as a colour carries a lot of weight so you really have to use your eye to judge it. Flick between my edit and your original un-cropped to see the difference.

I hope the above is helpful.

I do like that crop, thanks for your feedback and suggestions. I'm still a novice at post processing so I'll have to re-read your tips a few times and do some experimenting in PSE11 to see if I can better understand what you did. Thanks again!