Winery Pic

[jimsloy]

Please, do take a look at this and critique it. I've USM'd it in PS7.

http://mywebsite.register.com/db1/00089/consult-techs.net/_uimages/Grapes_small.jpg

[defordphoto]

How hard did you JPEG this? The background looks artifacted and weird. Otherwise a good shot except for the background. I think I would have spritzed the grapes with water for more of a dramatic effect.

[jimsloy]

I USMd it 400/2/0 so perhaps that made the background greens look like they do. Could scaling it down from 6mp to a 640x480 image also do that?

Good idea on the water spritzing!

Thanks,
Jim

[lightandlife]

It is a good glass.

Was it cropped? If not, may I presume the central focusing point was used? The center is not sharp.

There is a relatively big distance between the grape surface and the space between grapes, hence a fuzzy pic could be obtained when the focus is in between grapes, or in any rough surfaces. Try again.

[jimmyd]

RFMSports wrote:
How hard did you JPEG this? The background looks artifacted and weird. Otherwise a good shot except for the background. I think I would have spritzed the grapes with water for more of a dramatic effect.

English is such a great language for converting nouns to verbs.

artifact (n) -----------> artifact (v) as in "artifacted," or "artifacting"

[jimsloy]

lightandlife wrote:
It is a good glass.

Was it cropped? If not, may I presume the central focusing point was used? The center is not sharp.

There is a relatively big distance between the grape surface and the space between grapes, hence a fuzzy pic could be obtained when the focus is in between grapes, or in any rough surfaces. Try again.


No "croppage" was done. Yes, central focus always. It's a 28-105 USM lens. I've had trouble getting crisp clear pics w/ it - even on a tripod - I usually only do 200/2 USM in PS7 but 400 seemed to make this one more crisp.

[defordphoto]

jimmyd wrote:
RFMSports wrote:
How hard did you JPEG this? The background looks artifacted and weird. Otherwise a good shot except for the background. I think I would have spritzed the grapes with water for more of a dramatic effect.

English is such a great language for converting nouns to verbs.

artifact (n) -----------> artifact (v) as in "artifacted," or "artifacting"


Now that was useful contribution to the conversation.




NOT.

[jimmyd]

jimsloy wrote:
[quote]lightandlife wrote:
No "croppage" was done.

crop (v) ----------> crop (n), as in "croppage"

hehehehheheheh

[defordphoto]

jimsloy wrote:

I USMd it 400/2/0 so perhaps that made the background greens look like they do. Could scaling it down from 6mp to a 640x480 image also do that?

Good idea on the water spritzing!

Thanks,
Jim


Water spritzing works wonders on shots like these. (God forbid if spritz is a noun!).

Anyway, 400/2 is pretty heavy on the USM. That explains the odd looking bokeh.

[defordphoto]

jimmyd wrote:
jimsloy wrote:
[quote]lightandlife wrote:
No "croppage" was done.

crop (v) ----------> crop (n), as in "croppage"

hehehehheheheh


What are you a freaking English teacher? Everyone else is talking photography here. Sheesh.

[lightandlife]

Despite unfortunate implication, I never said anything about "croppage."

I am not trying to be a sour grape in the pic.

[RedShoesGirl]

400/2/0 is way too much USM. I took a very interesting class once and the gentleman suggested as a starting point 150/1.5/4. You can repeat that same filtering for more effect and it is less destructive to the image he says.

I use one of Fred Miranda's sharpening actions and really like the difference I see over the plain PS USM.

lara

[MediaMagic]

RFMSports wrote:

Water spritzing works wonders on shots like these. (God forbid if spritz is a noun!).



spritzer (n) - a concoction which, after heavy usage, makes all my photos look much better.

[defordphoto]

MediaMagic wrote:
RFMSports wrote:

Water spritzing works wonders on shots like these. (God forbid if spritz is a noun!).



spritzer (n) - a concoction which, after heavy usage, makes all my photos look much better.

ROFL! Now THAT is funny!

[defordphoto]

lightandlife wrote:
Despite unfortunate implication, I never said anything about "croppage."

I am not trying to be a sour grape in the pic.

;) That was not intended for you L&L.

[defordphoto]

And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Hey Jimsloy, how about re-processing that pic and using less USM, and then make it 800x600 high quality JPEG and lets see what that looks like?

There's a good lesson here waiting to be learned. And it's not an English lesson! ;)

[jimsloy]

RFMSports wrote:
And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Hey Jimsloy, how about re-processing that pic and using less USM, and then make it 800x600 high quality JPEG and lets see what that looks like?

There's a good lesson here waiting to be learned. And it's not an English lesson! ;)


OK..re-attached (I think this is a word) with 200/1/0 USM and 800x600.

http://mywebsite.register.com/db1/00089/consult-techs.net/_uimages/Grapes_small_1.jpg

[jimmyd]

[/quote]

What are you a freaking English teacher? Everyone else is talking photography here. Sheesh.[/quote]

I didn't realize a discussion of photography is so serious a subject it does not tolerate humor. Pardon moi.

[Webster]

I use one of Fred Miranda's sharpening actions and really like the difference I see over the plain PS USM.


Fred Miranda's actions are plain PS USM. They're just plain PS USM used very well.

[lightandlife]

I am curious about this shot. Is this by any chance a sign of frontfocusing? The center is not sharp.

[defordphoto]

I think the problem is that it's ultra-compressed. Realy heavy of the JPEG compression there. There are all kinds of artifacts and pixelization going on.

Jimsloy:

Any chance you can JUST sharpen it and resize it and not compress it so much? You can just place it on a server somewhere so the board doesn't get over-amped from having a large picture on it. It's really hard to tell what's going on here when the quality of the file is so low. The filesize is only 28K and that's pretty low for an 800x600 file.

But at first glance here I'd agree with L&L that this photo may be FF'd.

[jimsloy]

OK..I've USMd it in PS7 to 200/2/0 and resized to 800x600 with maximum quality (ie- little compression).

Any better?


http://images.fotopic.net/?id=1279220

[defordphoto]

jimsloy wrote:
OK..I've USMd it in PS7 to 200/2/0 and resized to 800x600 with maximum quality (ie- little compression).

Any better?




A little. You're actually back down to 600x400 mode. But this does show that this photo is not in focus. I'd make some more test shots to make sure you don't have problem.

[jimsloy]

RFMSports wrote:
jimsloy wrote:
OK..I've USMd it in PS7 to 200/2/0 and resized to 800x600 with maximum quality (ie- little compression).

Any better?




A little. You're actually back down to 600x400 mode. But this does show that this photo is not in focus. I'd make some more test shots to make sure you don't have problem.


Damn! Ok..teach me here...I saved it at 8x6 in PS7 and saved it at highest quality and then used fotopic.net to store it. Could fotopic be resizing it upon publication?? I also just purchased the remote switch accessory to do some more testing and for planned astrophotography. I find with the lens I have (28-105 f/3.5-4.5) that I have little success with in focus shots and ALWAYS have to mess w/ USM.

[design crusader]

First, make sure you are not sharpening BEFORE you downsample the image.

Then, you might want to try Fred Mirandas Web Presenter Action so you can downsample your photos and not loose as much of the sharpness (detail) that you had to begin with -- in the action, he actually just downsamples the image in increments of 93% until it reaches a pixel size closest to the dimensions that you are looking for, then the last command is to resample to the exact target pixel size such as 800px.

Next, you could use the Fred Miranda 10D CSPro or Intellisharpen to sharpen the image. You could do your own sharpening with USM, but immediately after you use the USM filter, use the fade filter command and choose Luminosity as your setting (sharpens the grayscale info -- not the color).

And finally, when you SAVE-for-Web and choose your JPEG settings, do not Optimize, do not set any blur, and try for lowest amount of compression (obviously a high value such as 100% is ideal).

You should get much better results from this process.

Post the result if you can.

[Doug Rowan]

Have you tried Genuine Fractals? I take my original images, make any corrections & save it in original size to the GF format. Close & reopen the GF image then resize & adjust printing resolution & resave it over the old GF file.

Genuine Fractals reduces the file size to 1/3 that of a PShop .psd file along with making excellent enlargements or file reductions without detail loss or pixelations. A fairly good review is here:
http://www.camerahobby.com/Digital_GenuineFractals.htm

[design crusader]

Doug Rowan wrote:
Have you tried Genuine Fractals? I take my original images, make any corrections & save it in original size to the GF format. Close & reopen the GF image then resize & adjust printing resolution & resave it over the old GF file.

Genuine Fractals reduces the file size to 1/3 that of a PShop .psd file along with making excellent enlargements or file reductions without detail loss or pixelations. A fairly good review is here:
http://www.camerahobby.com/Digital_GenuineFractals.htm


A little confusing, because this is conclusion from the review:

---------

Conclusion is that Genuine Fractal will provide a superior looking image in certain circumstances but perhaps still not enough to warrant a rather expensive purchase. If you receive it as part of a software package with a scanner or digital camera than by all means use it over Photoshop Bicubic interpolation but if you have to pay for it, I would still be hesitant to recommend it.

Genuine Fractals adds no details to the image but merely smooths over the pixels compared to the rougher interpolation methods or by enlarging the original pixels. An enlargement size that seems questionable likely will be still with Genuine Fractals. For certain subjects I can get away with using Genuine Fractals with a Coolpix 950 file or a scanned file from the Epson 1200 but for others in which a lot of detail is apparent, the results are not likely to satisfy the critical eye.

----------

[lightandlife]

One cannot design a one-size-fit-all program that will add more details and make all pictures better after the shot.

Some smart guys can design a program that will make some pics better but then other pics will be made worse. If one does not have time to adjust individual pics, such program may be useful for mass processing to some business.

Better invest time and money in lenses, rather than cosmetics, fractal or not.

[design crusader]

lightandlife wrote:
One cannot design a one-size-fit-all program that will add more details and make all pictures better after the shot.

Some smart guys can design a program that will make some pics better but then other pics will be made worse. If one does not have time to adjust individual pics, such program may be useful for mass processing to some business.

Better invest time and money in lenses, rather than cosmetics, fractal or not.


One size-fit-all-program to add more details or make pics better? True, probably won't ever happen, but I don't think anyone mentioned it.

Just showing that the conclusion of the review that was mentioned of Genuine Fractals was not all that good; and, had offered a recommendation for specific steps to try in order to reduce the amount of detail that is lost when downsampling and saving for web, sharpening advice, and compression advice.

[Doug Rowan]

You can download a free trial here:

http://www.lizardtech.com/download/?x=2&p=67&o=2&titl=Download%20Genuine%20Fractals%20PrintPro%203. 0%20-%20Trial%20Version

I would recommed you try it before you decide. Look at the images & decide for yourselves before you discount it. I know many professional photogs that use it daily for storing lossless images without eating up wasted storage.

I've never had one person come back to me & tell me that this program wasn't the best. An example, do you want to fill up your harddrive storage with .psd files or 3 times that many as GF files?

[MediaMagic]

jimsloy wrote:
RFMSports wrote:
jimsloy wrote:
OK..I've USMd it in PS7 to 200/2/0 and resized to 800x600 with maximum quality (ie- little compression).

Any better?




A little. You're actually back down to 600x400 mode. But this does show that this photo is not in focus. I'd make some more test shots to make sure you don't have problem.


Could fotopic be resizing it upon publication??



Fotopic will resize the pic, yes. Go into the gallery setup and you'll find a check box that enables/disables resizing as well as selecting the size to resize to (if enabled).

David

[Joytek]

how did you post this image here?
i can't seem to do it.

w.

[jimsloy]

OK...picture compress and resize and unmask try #3.

Steps
1) resized in PS7 to 800x533 (to be exact)
2) USMd in PS7 to 200/1/0
3) uploaded to fotopic without resizing on their end
4) Go here: http://jim-sloyer.fotopic.net/photo.php?id=1288555 to view it
5) give me the skinny now

Joytek: Hit the "HELP" up top here on this forum to learn how to post images within your msg. Gotta use the img tags with the link between.

Thanks