ALL and ANY comments gratefully appreciated

[the naturelover]

Hi. As a rule I do not mess with my photographs. But as it has been pouring down all day I decided to mess a little.
I would dearly like to hear you're comments on the following set. the first is the original and the following 3 have all been cropped to a degree in stages.
I think the last one is a step too far as it is starting to lose sharpness.

original

first crop

second crop

last crop
ANY comments gratefully appreciated.
regards tn.

[Geoff F]

Never mind the quality, for now.

Your crops are all wrong.

The first one doesn't go far enough. The others are cropped too close on the right side.

A bird, or any creature including humans, needs 'a bit of space to look at'. So the general rule is to leave more space in front of the subject than behind.

Sometimes this isn't completely practical but there should still be sufficient space that it doesn't look cramped.

Try the second and third crops again and you will see what I mean.

This principle even applies to 'dead' but moving objects like cars or boats, etc.

And after doing a bit of serious cropping and resizing, your image will need a bit of extra, but very careful, sharpening to restore those pixels which have become soft.

[Jim Ford]

You should adjust the levels such as to get a spread of tones from white in the bird's white feathers, to black in the darkest shadow. It will 'lift' the image and give it sparkle.

Jim

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by Geoff F

And after doing a bit of serious cropping and resizing, your image will need a bit of extra, but very careful, sharpening to restore those pixels which have become soft.

Strictly speaking the pixels haven't 'become' soft, they were soft to start with and cropping and enlarging the remainder has revealed the softness.

Unless in-camera sharpening has been applied _all_ image pixels will be soft out of a digital camera, and the image need sharpening except in the most trivial cases (eg small final sized image - a postcard sized print).

Sharpening is the most misunderstood part of digital photography!

Jim

[the naturelover]

My thanks so far. the spacial thing certainly works. I have recropped leaving much more to the right and it WORKS WONDERS.
As I said orriginally I am not used to using photo edit software and am having great difficulty correcting the ballance although i completely understand the concept you are trying to explain. I will keep playing and see what I can come up with.
Watch this space. my thanks for you're comments so far.
regards tn.

[htcdude]

I really like the composition of the second crop, look really nice. The last crop is a bit off though

Nige

[Geoff F]

I've just had a quick play around with the original but there aren't really enough pixels here to do it justice. Working with the original should produce much better results.



There isn't a lot wrong with the original settings so besides a crop I have merely given a very slight tweak with Curves and tried a little sharpen.

[Red Robin]

First crop is the better overall picture - It's very Japanese woodcut art (Koson).

Otherwise the shot is a bit boring when it's just the bird and missing the lefthand branchwork.

Probably most folks on WAB won't be looking past the main wildlife subject - In this case the bird itself. I'm a very experienced Art Director (amongst many other things, he said modestly).

[the naturelover]

Thankyou all for you're input. I have found the comments very useful. I really must try to find the time to mess a little more and learn a lot.
regards tn.