CC on 3.

[dots]

 

[reissigree]

That looks amazing! What exactly did you do to it?

 

[RichardsTPF]

or use fill flash fill flash

Agree. It's the first way I will try. But considering the distance, I think it's only power enough to bring up the foreground.
HDR might be a better solution if the weather or direction of the sun light is not an option.

 

[RichardsTPF]

That looks amazing! What exactly did you do to it?

Like your pp. I am new to post. I also want to know how you did it.

 

[MLeeK]

I think you need a monitor calibrator and to learn about metering. These are DARK. Probably almost 2 stops on the first one. Definitely more than 1 stop on the other 2.
The flower is pretty, but it's dead center and boring.

You can't expose foreground and sky correctly in most instances. That's where you use a fill flash or shoot a minimum of 2 exposures (one for the sky, one for the subject) or HDR set.

Post processing is great, but if you get it right in camera first it's a whole lot less time invested. It's hard to tell you how to post process unless we know what software you are working with and if you are working in Raw or JPEG.

 

[dots]

I'll do it again and upload some screen captures to try to explain.

 

[EchoingWhisper]

I followed the line to.....nothing.

It would be nice if there was a cat.

Cloning?

 

[KmH]

Add to your list of tutorials:
Digital Photography Tutorials
Guidelines for Better Photographic Composition: Introduction
Advanced Composition -- Part I

Consider getting some inexpensive, often recommended books:

Light Science and Magic, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting

Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera

Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography (Updated Edition)

The Photographer's Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos

 

[dots]

1. Opened your jpeg in image editor (Faststone Image Viewer)

2. Saved it as tiff file. Opened the tiff to edit.

3. Straighten for the eye, as best you can

4. crop (this is 5:4, try to incorporate Diagonal and Thirds relationships into the choice of crop, around one or more points of the composition which attract your eye)

5. Levels tool - adjust RGB midpoint

6. Levels tool - adjust color balance

7. Curves tool - adjust curve

8. 'Lighting' tool - a bit of shadow recovery, additional boost of highlight, added contrast (could have been achieved also using Levels or Curves..just an optional), saturation - inside the flower, the color seems a bit oversaturated)

9. USM "unsharp mask" - 100/0.2 aren't typical values for me but seems to work here. Usually for web, i find i use e.g radius values like 0.2,0.3,0.4,0.8 depends on the lens, the detail..and amounts between 10 and 40.

I denoised your image in the previous post (chrominance noise) but that is done in a different app. That should be done early on in the process.

 

[reissigree]

Thank you for using your time to help me! I really appreciate it. It's people like you that help people like me become better photographers!

 

[RichardsTPF]

Appreciate your detail instruction. I just got a PS CS5. The window layout could be different. but the method should be similar. Will practice practice and practice. Again thank you for your time.

One more question, when I tried to paste screen capture on the thread, it keeps telling me my post was over the capacity.

 

[dots]

I don't know. I screen capture..CNTRLV it into an image editor and save as jpeg.

 

[dots]

I don't think my edit was that hot b/c i had to organize all these screen caps but you get the general idea..

1. Work in subdued lighting so you can focus on the screen.

2. Try to get your monitor calibrated..even at least using something like calibrize app or lacom.nl website

3. Less is more. Try to get nice exposure, white balance, composition in camera. Subtle tone-curve adjustments and not too strong sharpening (for web)

4. Dodge and Burn for creative emphasis (Photoshop dodge and burn tools)

 

[MelissaP]

I like #1 neat perspective and agree with the other comments as well. #3:From what I've learned on this forum so far, flowers shouldn't be completely centred. Maybe the left 1/6 could be cropped-I think the window light takes sort of takes away from the flower.

 

[dots]

Also 'head-on' view of the flower is less interesting than at an angle.