Be gentle. Actually scratch that. Be brutally honest. It's my first dSLR so I'm still trying to figure out how the thing works. As far as i can tell Gimp doesn't handle RAW so I shot all of these in JPEG. Would it have made that much of a difference if I had shot RAW? Man I have a LOT to learn!
1- looks a tad blurry until you hit the brown building in the mid-left. May be underexposed. 2- I also think its underexposed, but with any higher exposure, your left would have been blown out (as it almost is). With water, try to get it either quick enough to stop it completley or do an at least 3 second exposure to get a good misty look to the water, not inbetween as youve done here (camera in full auto I presume?) 3- also looks a tad soft and maybe a little overexposed. I can kind of see what you were going for though. GIMP wont do RAW, and i hate it for that. I love the software, it would be soo much better if it transferred RAW. RAW doesnt automatically make your images better. RAW gives you more ways to edit your photos to get what you really want out of them (if I understand correctly). RAW photos themselves usually look dim and dreary compared to what they look like after a good JAW-JPG conversion and edit, actually. RAW is always better if you know what youre doing with it, but as with DSLRs in general, if you dont know whaqt youre doing with it, its just as bad, if not worse than having a crappy P&S. Same principle applies to shooting in RAW. If you dont know what youre doing with RAW, it could potentially be worse than shooting in JPG. Mark
2nd post of photos-- 1-the background edit is really sloppy and there is a white line around the statue because of it. Great concept though. I wish it would have worked. 2- I like this one. Needs a horizon shift, but I do like this. Nice colors and focus. Now apply it to a more interesting sunject . Nice photo. Mark
1-Yeah it's a tricky process. I thought it would be ok after I reduced the size, unfortunate;y after I cropped it I forgot to reduce it. How's it look when you view the smaller version. I tried selecting the background then expanding it by a pixel ot two but that just gave me a black border around the statue instead of a white one. 2- By horizon shift do mean that it's crooked?
You need the UFRaw plugin. You can also use the software that came with your Canon. Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is a RAW editor and ZoomBrowserEX can also handle RAW files. DPP is a good photo editor but you can't do major edits with it like you can with Photoshop. I feel that the pictures I take with my XTi, 40D and 5D come out better when I shoot in RAW rather than JPEG. RAW gives you much more info to work with when editing. And shooting in RAW means you can make white balance adjustments in post process instead of having to get it right in-camera.
i was gonna say the same thing. you don't really see the white line until you look at the full size image.
I went back and figured how to use DPP. The first time I tried I didn't look in the right place for the tools. I went out yesterday and shot some RAW but I when thought I was setting the camera for spot metering I was actually just changeing the auto focus points. Finally figured it out. I do like the quality of the raw images. I edited this one with DPP then converted it to JPG. Does it allways take two pics when in the RAW mode? One RAW and one JPG?
On the first photo in the second post-- it doesn't look right. But don't worry, I have the same problem: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...4-beginner-post-processing-why-does-suck.html I don't know what GIMP is all about. But if there's any magic-wand-style tool or quick-selection tool, try adjusting the tolerances to get it to wrap more tightly around the statue. There's a setting in camera to shoot only raw, or raw + jpeg. Once again I don't know where it is (lot of help, lol), but I KNOW its on there.
