Speeding into fall...

[baillie117]

I would like some advice on what I've done right or wrong with this photo. I would like to improve my work and am looking for criticism.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Cindy,

I think it's the start of a really nice picture

What I would do though is ...

- Increase both the brightness and vibrance so that the autumn colours really show their saturation

- Crop the image so that there is more distance infront of the rider than there is behind him (giving an implied sense of direction)

- Change the aspect ratio to make the image more panoramic (ie cropping off a lot of the tops of the trees).

I quickly threw it into Photoshop to give you an idea of what I'm meaning (hope you don't mind).



(Sorry it's lacking a bit of detail - weren't many pixels left to play with!)

Does this help?

[baillie117]

Thank you so much, Colin. You've been a great help. I like what you've done with it. I understand what you mean by not many pixels left to play with. I'm new to posting so is there something I should do differently? I do have some understanding of jpgs, compression, etc. And I do shoot raw for post processing. Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated. I am so glad to find a forum where everyone is so helpful and gentle with their criticism.

[Colin Southern]

Thank you so much, Colin. You've been a great help. I like what you've done with it. I understand what you mean by not many pixels left to play with. I'm new to posting so is there something I should do differently? I do have some understanding of jpgs, compression, etc. And I do shoot raw for post processing. Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated. I am so glad to find a forum where everyone is so helpful and gentle with their criticism.

Hi Cindy,

You're very welcome.

My suggestion would be to sign-up to a photo hosting site like pbase.com so you can keep all your images in your own galleries, and then link to them here - that way you can control the images and control the size you keep them in. They charge a few $$$ a year, but well worth it in my opinion. I also like to encourage people to post images with a "few more" rather than "a few less" pixels -- your original image would have been "average" size wise, but my extreme cropping made things worse. Personally, I post images with the longest size being in the range of 1024 pixels. All things we can help you with.

If you take a look at my pbase gallery at www.pbase.com/cjsouthern you'll get an idea as to how one can make a simple but effective showcase for their work (and then link to it here) (reason I say all this is that attachment space here is pretty limited, so better to start you off the right way rather than have you make the change later on down the track, which is more work).

RAW shooting is excellent - it gives the most safety margin to work with. If you like, send me the RAW shot of the above image, and I'll give it a proper retouch for you.

What software are you using for post-processing?

[baillie117]

To answer your questions, I have CS5 and Lightroom 3. I started out with CS5 but starting to like Lightroom 3 better. But there are some plug-ins I have for CS5 that I still use. So I usually start most post processing in Lightroom and edit a copy in CS5 if there is something I can't accomplish in LR. I have emailed a link to SkyDrive with the picture. I'm afraid I had an error though. I forgot that this set of pics are only in jpg. I was with a friend and she wanted to try out my camera. And I did not check to see if she changed any settings. I found out later I had only been shooting jpgs. I won't be making that mistake again. (I hope) So hopefully this will still give you something to work with. Thanks, again.

Cindy

[Colin Southern]

Hi Cindy,

I took a bit of "artistic licence" with it ... hope you like!

(Click on image for bigger view)

[baillie117]

Hello, again,

I truly love what you've done and shown me what can be done. Maybe I will just send you my photos to "fix". LOL I think one of my issues is learning how to "show off" my photos. And what I mean is something like you've done, add a frame, tilt it, enhance it. These are some things I need to work at. Hope to post again soon with some improvements. Have a great day!

Cindy

[Donald]

Cindy

The wonderful thing about being part of CiC, (which Colin has shown), is that there are lots and lots of people with the sort of knowledge and experience that he has (well, maybe not quite as much as him), who are willing to share that to help other people to learn. It's certainly the reason I am part of CiC.

And remember, all of us were once at the same point on that learning curve that you are at just now. So, you can ,learn all of that as well. Sometimes it seems as if there is just too much to learn. And it can get pretty depressing. But stick with it. People on here will help you through. It's all about learning one thing at a time.

[FrankMi]

reason I say all this is that attachment space here is pretty limited

Hi Colin, could you elaborate a bit on the attachment space? I have a small album and post images fairly regularly but haven't run into any limits that I'm aware of. What are the limits on this forum and how are they managed.
I'd like to avoid an unexpected

Thanks!

[Colin Southern]

Hello, again,

I truly love what you've done and shown me what can be done. Maybe I will just send you my photos to "fix". LOL I think one of my issues is learning how to "show off" my photos. And what I mean is something like you've done, add a frame, tilt it, enhance it. These are some things I need to work at. Hope to post again soon with some improvements. Have a great day!

Cindy

Hi Cindy,

No worries

Just remember that nothing is hard -- everything we do can be broken down to a (usually small) series of steps that are fairly easily learned - BUT - people need to make that investment in learning them (but the good news is that there are lots of ways to do that). So just stick around and let us help

[Colin Southern]

And remember, all of us were once at the same point on that learning curve that you are at just now.

Absolutely! I always like to think that there will always be thouse who know more than be, and those that know less - so the "trick" becomes to learn from those who know more, and pass it on to those who know less.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Colin, could you elaborate a bit on the attachment space? I have a small album and post images fairly regularly but haven't run into any limits that I'm aware of. What are the limits on this forum and how are they managed.

Hi Frank,

Basically, there is a limit to the total space each user is allocated. Not sure what it's set at at the moment (I can check with Sean if you like?), but if folks are planning on staying for a while (and we hope they do) then ultimately I think it's better to link to an external album; if nothing else, it gives one a LOT more flexibility. I pay a few $$$ to pbase each year for several hundred megabytes (and I'm still only using 1/4 of it).

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Frank,

Basically, there is a limit to the total space each user is allocated. Not sure what it's set at at the moment (I can check with Sean if you like?), but if folks are planning on staying for a while (and we hope they do) then ultimately I think it's better to link to an external album; if nothing else, it gives one a LOT more flexibility. I pay a few $$$ to pbase each year for several hundred megabytes (and I'm still only using 1/4 of it).

Two other advantages of PBase over the attachments is individual image size (limited to 700px in the albums here) and also the EXIF data is lost here, but maintained and easily visible at PBase.

In its simplest, the "EXIF data" is the camera settings a shot was taken at; for example, scroll down below picture.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ...

[jprzybyla]

Colin, your work gives me inspiration to learn and work harder at both photography and post processing.

[FrankMi]

I can check with Sean if you like?

It sounds like if we stay on CiC long enough we will eventually run totally out of image space?

I'm not sure if that would help to know the size unless we could determine how much of the total we've used. Perhaps there is a way for us to delete old images that no longer apply?

[ddp4me]

To All,

I was uploading pictures to an album recently and I think it tells you how much space you are using and how much is left. Not sure if this applies to albums only or all posts?

I can't find where I saw it at this time but I'll let you know if I find it again.

Thanks, Darlene