Back to that grass at Loch Leven

[Donald]

After last week's helpful comments on an image I posted, went back to the same spot last Sunday morning and took something slightly different. Your comments always welcome.

The big bit of learning with this was from Sean's tutorial about re-sizing for the web. This grass going into the sky area was a real challenge. There's still Moiré in there, but hopefully not too bad. Sean's tutorial states that, ".... the sinc algorithm is not widely supported and software which uses it is often not as user-friendly." The GIMP does and it certainly made a difference on this.


40D, 17-85 IS USM@47mm, ISO 100, 1/2sec@f20, Circ Pol + GND4

For the historians, the island is that on which Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned in the mid-16th century, before escaping and being recaptured, taken to England and, after being imprisoned for a number of years, was executed on the order of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth 1 of England (she got her head chopped off).

And, of course, the present Queen Elizabeth is NOT Elizabeth II of Scotland, because we never had an Elizabeth I. The crowns were only united in 1603 when Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England as well.

History lesson over. Don't you just love learning something new every day!

[Colin Southern]

Hi Donald,

It looks pretty good to my eye, ... just one or two "musings" ...

- Overall it's all fairly light - I suspect that it would look better if there were more contrast (ie black clipping point raised or gamma shifted slightly).

- To my eye, the foreground vegetation looks a little too dominant - I'm wondering if it would have looked better if you'd taken a couple of steps back?

- Great to see people going the extr mile by putting frames & borders around their images - but I'm wondering if the black is a little too over-powering?

[Donald]

Colin

Many thanks for your comments. Points 1 & 3 addressed and, of course, you're right. Can't do anything about point 2 today due to aforementioned strained muscle. But I'll be back there.

[Steve S]

Hi donald,

I think you did a great job on the composition this time.

The background and sky seem a bit washed out though. A little contrast in those areas would help alot.

The saturation of the grass is a little overpowering to me, and tends to draw my eye. A little less saturation in that area would help i think.

I did a quick edit using gimp to give you an idea of what i'm talking about. I didn't mess with the bright spot of the water, it may need toned down a little because i darkened the sky with saturation, but you get the idea. I also added some contrast to the land in the background.

To selectively saturate or desaturate, i dup. the layer---add a good bit of saturation to the layer---add layer mask set to black--- and brush in the areas you want saturated with a soft brush set to white.

[Donald]

Hi donald,

I think you did a great job on the composition this time.

The background and sky seem a bit washed out though. A little contrast in those areas would help a lot.

Steve
Many thanks. After Colin's post (above) I re-worked this and ended up with almost what you've done. You've darkened the sky even more than I had and it does look better. But, on the grass, we're virtually identical.

[Steve S]

Steve
Many thanks. After Colin's post (above) I re-worked this and ended up with almost what you've done. You've darkened the sky even more than I had and it does look better. But, on the grass, we're virtually identical.

Any time donald, another thing i noticed is a haylo around the grass from over sharpening. Reducing the radius will help, but better yet use one of the smart sharpening technique's.( High pass, or in gimp i use a layer mask set to grayscale and edge detect--this only sharpens the edges and is similar to high pass sharpening.) check out the process at meet the gimp , episode 006. I sharpen with edge detect, and then a real light overall sharpening.